Fidel Castro's friends in Ottawa***Engagement with Cuba has been the official line in Ottawa for decades. Pierre Elliott Trudeau was famously chummy with the Cuban dictator, and left-wing Canadian politicos have been sucking up to Havana ever since -- mostly as a means to demonstrate Canada's moral superiority to the United States. Indeed, Canada indirectly helps prop up Cuba's government in a number of ways. From 1994 to 1999, the federal Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) provided $34-million in development assistance to Cuba. Last November, CIDA pledged $750,000 over six years toward a University of New Brunswick project to help Cuba create a biomedical engineering education program. Last October, CIDA made a three-year, $2.9-million commitment to a training program for Cuban workers run by the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology.
Moreover, in the 2000-2001 fiscal year, Canadian taxpayers paid about $30-million to cover Canadian exports to Cuba that el jefe máximo could not or would not pay for. Canada has also granted Cuba what amounts to a $14-million line of credit to help pay for Canadian agricultural imports.As noted above, Mr. Chrétien justifies propping up Mr. Castro's dictatorship under the theory that "it's better to be engaged because that's putting pressure." But in this regard, we'd like to direct the Prime Minister's attention to a brilliant piece of historical analysis published by Cuba expert Ann Louise Bardach in last Sunday's New York Times. As Ms. Bardach shows, it is exactly at those junctures when Cuba was most "engaged" with the West that Mr. Castro -- fearing glasnost might undermine his authoritarian rule -- took deliberate steps to cement his rogue status.***
Castro Defends Executions, Says US Provoking Conflict - Nothing A Little Freedom Wouldn't Cure*** "The sinister idea is to provoke an armed conflict between Cuba and the United States in the hope of ending the revolution," he said on a television program where he spoke for almost four hours. Cuba has allowed mass departures in 1980, when 125,000 people left from the port of Mariel, and in 1994, when 35,000 Cubans were picked up at sea by the U.S. Coast Guard, many taken to the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay. Most ended up in the United States. Castro said the top U.S. diplomat in Havana, James Cason, was sent to Cuba last year with instructions to stir up opposition to his government and had overstepped the boundaries of diplomatic conduct.
The Cuban leader repeated his accusations that Cason was "a bully with diplomatic immunity" who had turned the U.S. mission into "an incubator of counterrevolutionaries" by allowing dissidents to openly hold meetings in his residence. Most of the 75 dissidents and independent journalists arrested and given stiff prison terms on charges of being on the payroll of the United States and conspiring to subvert the government were activists seeking peaceful reforms.***