Where Is Canada's Backbone in Standing Up to the U.S. on Cuba?
- John Kirk and Stephen Kimber -
In June 1996, mere months after the U.S. Congress
passed
the Helms-Burton Act to
tighten the screws on Cuba's economy,
Canada became the first country to publicly say "no" to
Washington's plan.
Back then, Ottawa announced
it would introduce new legislation
to blunt the bully-boy impact of Title III -- an
extra-territorial section of that law that prohibits non-U.S.
companies from "trafficking" in what the United States claims is
American property confiscated after the 1959 Cuban revolution -- and
threatened to take the United States to international
arbitration.
Within the month, prime minister Jean Chrétien
had
rallied Group of Seven leaders, forcing then-U.S. president Bill
Clinton to backtrack. Mr. Clinton imposed a six-month waiver on
allowing American companies or Cuban Americans to sue for
compensation in U.S. courts.
Every U.S. president since -- Democrat and Republican --
has extended that moratorium in six-month increments,
because the law, which allows American courts to punish non-U.S.
companies simply for doing business in Cuba, violates accepted
international trade norms. Those presidents knew countries such
as Canada would raise hell if they didn't extend the waiver.
But now, keen on bringing regime change to Venezuela,
Nicaragua and Cuba (hawkish national security adviser John
Bolton's "troika of tyranny"), the Trump administration has
changed the rules.
Last month, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo allowed
Americans to sue the Cuban government in U.S. courts over
properties nationalized nearly 60 years ago. And he now says he
will decide by April 17 whether to expand that to allow similar
lawsuits against foreign companies, including Canadian ones.
So why is Canada's response so muted? Where is Canadian
backbone today?
It's not hard to understand what Mr. Trump and his
allies are
up to. Under the malign ideological influence of Mr. Bolton, Mr.
Pompeo and Republican Senator Marco Rubio, a Trump ally and
vociferous critic of the Cuban government, the United States is
deliberately intensifying tensions between Washington and Havana
even as it dismantles improvements in relations initiated by
former U.S. president Barack Obama.
While Mr. Trump muses about putting Cuba back onto the
list of
countries Washington claims promote terrorism, Mr. Rubio wants to
bring back legislation from the George W. Bush era, overturned by
Mr. Obama, that encouraged Cuban medical staff working abroad to
defect. Earlier this month, thanks largely to his lobbying, Mr.
Trump scuttled a done-deal between Major League Baseball and its
Cuban counterpart to allow Cubans to legally play baseball in the
United States.
Perhaps most ominously for Canada, Mr. Rubio pointedly
warned
foreign investors: "If you are dealing with stolen property in
Cuba, now would be a good time to get out."
Canada -- with historically close ties with Cuba --
has a significant stake in all of this. Like virtually every
other country in the world, Canada long ago negotiated
compensation for its citizens and companies whose properties were
nationalized after the revolution. Under Mr. Obama, even the
United States, which had previously rejected Cuban compensation
offers, began to negotiate certified claims.
Now, if Mr. Trump makes good on his threats, even the
Havana
airport and cruise terminal could become a focus of thousands of
U.S. court claims worth U.S.$8 billion.
Canada's Sherritt International Corp., the single
largest
foreign investor in Cuba, is at risk. So are many other Canadian
companies that trade with or invest in Cuba, including banks with
offices there, Quebec and Alberta farmers, Air Canada and
possibly even charter flight companies Sunwing Airlines Inc., Air
Transat A.T. Inc. and WestJet Airlines Ltd.
No wonder Canadian Chamber of Commerce's Mark Agnew
sounded
worried recently: Title III "could affect any company which has
any, any relationship with Cuba," he declared.
While Ottawa insists Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland
is
quietly lobbying Washington and reassuring Canadian companies she
has their back, that muted response is telling -- and
dangerous.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau desperately wants the seat
on
the UN Security Council that Stephen Harper failed to win in
2010. Much of Canada's foreign policy for the past four years has
been predicated on achieving that end.
That makes taking on the Americans complicated. Mr.
Trudeau
must deal with the implications of what his father once called
"sleeping with an elephant." Under the mercurial, unpredictable
Mr. Trump, that elephant is rampaging madly off in all manner of
dangerous directions -- from rewritten trade deals to
unjustified tariffs to personal insults.
But the reality is we already have laws in place --
1985's Foreign Extraterritorial
Measures Act (FEMA), for example -- designed specifically to
protect Canadians from being
forced to comply with illegitimate American laws. It was amended
in 1996 precisely to act as an antidote to Helms-Burton. And we
have international laws and norms on our side, too.
It's time for the Canadian government to dust off our
legislation and show some backbone, forcefully rejecting this
U.S. aggression toward Cuba -- not to mention protecting our
own national interests in the bargain.
John Kirk is a professor of
Latin American studies at
Dalhousie University, where he has worked since 1978. He is the
author or co-editor of 18 books on Latin America.
Stephen Kimber is a
professor of journalism at the University
of King's College and the author of nine books, including most
recently, the award-winning What Lies Across the Water: The
Real
Story of the Cuban Five.
This article was published in
Volume 49 Number 14 - April 20, 2019
Article Link:
Where Is Canada's Backbone in Standing Up to the U.S. on Cuba? - John Kirk and Stephen Kimber
Website: www.cpcml.ca
Email: editor@cpcml.ca
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