Time to put pressure on Cuba To lift the smokescreen

A dozen years since the Iron Curtain parted, the divide between the civilized world and Cuba — let’s call it the Smokescreen — remains in place. But we know that what lies behind it is an affront to human rights, a system that grows more oppressive as the years go by.

Last week three veterans of the struggle against communist oppression in Eastern Europe decided the world needs reminding. In a letter published in many European press outlets, the Czech Vaclav Havel, the Hungarian Arpad Goncz, and the Pole Lech Walesa — each of whom became president of his country after communist governments collapsed — contend that European governments have failed in their program of “engagement” with the government of Fidel Castro, and that the United States’ trade embargo on the country has done no better.

Significantly, Havel, Goncz and Walesa do not argue for the U.S. embargo to be lifted, or for Europe to cut off trade with Cuba: their letter, dated six months after the Cuban government imprisoned 75 of its opponents, instead says Western governments should “concentrate on direct support for Cuban dissidents, prisoners of conscience and their families.”

Given the contempt proper European leaders like Jacques Chirac and Gerhard Schroder evidently feel for brave Eastern leaders, the idea may be a non-starter in Europe. What we notice, though, is that Cuba’s third-largest trading partner and second-largest aid donor got off without so much as a warning: yes, that’s our country.

In the 1960s, Canada and Mexico were alone in the Western Hemisphere in maintaining diplomatic and trade relationships with the communist government in Cuba. Canada has maintained diplomatic contact through decades of Castroist oppression and appropriation, during Cuba’s imperial adventurism in Africa, and in spite of Castro’s welcome to hijackers and political kidnappers. It’s quite a record of “engagement,” and it has done the forces of freedom about as much good as anyone else’s (except for one good result: it is now known the West gained a substantial intelligence advantage through having a Canadian mission in Havana during the Cold War).

We don’t suppose that the present government, or any future government we can foresee, would turn from an engagement policy to one of divestment. But if human-rights abuses in Cuba went to an extreme, there might one day be a political constituency for action.

After all, the proponents of “engagement” always claim that a country without a relationship to the target regime has no leverage, no ability to take away carrots or to apply sticks. If that argument is to be of any use to them, then they have to concede that at some point we can justifiably cut off ties with a government we have tried to engage.

If Canadian companies were forced to stop doing business in Cuba, who in our industry would be affected? First stop, Sherritt International, which has $470 million invested in the country, in nickel mining, power generation, hydrocarbon production, and a grab-bag of other commercial interests.

Complete Canadian divestment from Cuba would be disastrous for Sherritt. The investments were made legally, and for the government to require it to walk away would be, in effect, an expropriation of the company’s assets.

Northern Orion Resources and Holmer Gold Mines have significant interests — Northern Orion has put about $25 million into its Mantua copper project and Holmer, about $5.5 million into its Loma Hierro silver project. To Northern Orion and Holmer shareholders, that’s not peanuts; and we won’t be so cavalier as to say the companies never should have invested in Cuba, or so blind as to say the shareholders can just go ahead and lose that money. It’s always easy to be ethical when others will foot the bill for it. Divestment, swallowed neat, would bring unfair harm to too many people.

That may bring us to the best judgment on the philosophy of engagement: that when it does come time to disengage from a country whose government is as objectionable as Cuba’s, you can’t generally do it without dealing out a lot of financial pain to ordinary investors. They aren’t the ones who went to Havana and cried “viva Castro,” or let Cuban planes refuel in Gander when Cuba was ferrying troops to its imperialist war in Angola; and they should not be the ones that pay now for Canadian tolerance of the Castro regime in the past.

Instead, this country should look at placing a freeze on any new investment in Cuba, and reducing aid. We are, after Spain, the second-largest aid donor to Cuba, though the annual amount is a fairly modest $3 million to $5 million. Chopping that aid won’t hurt Canadians, and — if apologists for the Castro government are right in telling us over and over what a paradise that government has created — it won’t hurt ordinary Cubans either.

Divert that aid money to the “Cuban Democracy Fund” that Havel, Goncz and Walesa propose, and it will serve a very good purpose when the old regime disappears — no doubt, in a puff of smoke.