Nova Scotia Cuba Association

Avoiding Responsibility: Canada’s Travel Advisory as Complicity in the War on Cuba

Isaac Saney

The Government of Canada’s travel advisory urging Canadians to “avoid non-essential travel to Cuba due to worsening shortages of fuel, electricity, and basic necessities including food, water, and medicine” is not a neutral public-safety notice. It is a political act. More than that, it is an act of acquiescence to—indeed collaboration with—the illegal and immoral U.S. economic war on Cuba. By presenting a pending humanitarian crisis as a reason to stay away, rather than naming and condemning the deliberate policies that have produced it, Ottawa becomes complicit in the collective punishment of the Cuban people.

Let us be clear: Cuba’s shortages are not the result of natural disaster or internal collapse. They are the foreseeable and intended outcome of a systematic campaign by Washington—now intensified by Donald Trump and Marco Rubio—to strangle Cuba’s access to fuel, foreign exchange, and trade. Canada’s failure to officially condemn and reject these measures, and its decision instead to issue advisories that echo their consequences, amounts to tacit endorsement.

This unmasks the duplicity in Prime Minister Mark Carney’s recently “acclaimed” speech at Davos, in which he criticized the hypocrisy of the current international order. Fine words ring hollow when not matched by principled action. Just as Ottawa failed in its duty to unequivocally oppose and reject the genocide in Gaza, it is now failing as a similar catastrophe—engineered through economic means—threatens Cuba. One cannot denounce hypocrisy on the world stage while practicing it at home.

The stance of the Canadian government stands in stark opposition to the will of the vast majority of Canadians, who not only reject the U.S. economic war on Cuba but are demanding that Ottawa provide immediate, direct, and concrete material and humanitarian assistance to the island—especially in the form of oil and energy shipments to the besieged nation.

Across social media and public platforms, Canadians are raising their voices, urging the federal government to act now. This public sentiment is powerfully expressed in the recently launched Canadian Parliamentary Petition (e-7082), which condemns the U.S. economic blockade of Cuba and calls on Canada to deepen economic ties, trade, and assistance to the heroic island nation. The petition has already garnered—and continues to gather—thousands of signatures, sending a clear and unmistakable message to Prime Minister Carney and Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand: Canadians want concrete solidarity with Cuba, not complicity in its punishment for resisting imperialism.

Hundreds of thousands of Canadians have family members in Cuba. Millions more have travelled to the island, returning not merely as tourists, but as witnesses to—and participants in—enduring human connections. Over decades, Canadians have come to hold a deep and abiding respect for the Cuban people: for their dignity, resilience, creativity, and generosity in the face of relentless external aggression. Whatever our political or ideological differences, Canadians overwhelmingly support relations with Cuba grounded in mutual respect, equality, and the unassailable right of the Cuban people to choose their own path, free from coercion and domination.

To defend Cuba today is to defend Canada. It is to defend Canada’s sovereignty against extraterritorial bullying. It is to defend the right of Canadians to travel, trade, and engage freely. It is to defend international law against raw power, coercion, and the grotesque doctrine that "might makes right". And it is to defend a people who, despite decades of siege, continue to stand with dignity and courage.

History will record, with unforgiving clarity, where we stood at this decisive moment. Canada must choose independence over subservience, principle over expediency, and humanity over cruelty.