Cuba’s ambassador to Canada advised MPs on Tuesday that the USA is “suffocating a whole individuals” and creating an financial and humanitarian disaster, and urged Ottawa to comply with by way of with a promised assist package deal.
A U.S. oil blockade has curtailed gas and primary provides to the more and more remoted Caribbean island, because the Trump administration places stress on Cuba’s socialist authorities.
Talking earlier than the Home overseas affairs committee Tuesday afternoon, Ambassador Rodrigo Malmierca Diaz stated the shortage of gas has affected “each side of life within the nation,” from meals distribution to schooling to public well being.
“The target of this oil blockade is obvious: to create a humanitarian disaster and attempt to drive regime change by way of it,” the ambassador advised MPs.
“The collective punishment of an entire nation is an unjustifiable crime. One could disagree with the nation’s political venture, however there is no such thing as a proper in anyway that justifies an important energy — primarily based on its financial and navy may — interfering in its inside affairs, violating its independence. A lot much less acceptable is a superpower trying to realize its targets by suffocating a whole individuals.”
Overseas Affairs Minister Anita Anand advised reporters earlier Tuesday forward of a cupboard assembly that Ottawa was making ready an assist package deal for Cuba, however wouldn’t share particulars forward of its announcement in “the approaching days.”
Canada-U.S. Commerce Minister Dominic LeBlanc stated on Feb. 13 that Canada was engaged on offering some kind of humanitarian reduction to the island.
“I admire very a lot the choice or the information that the Canadian authorities is contemplating to approve a package deal of assist for Cuba,” Diaz stated.
Cuba had been weathering financial hardship earlier than U.S. President Donald Trump successfully lower off oil shipments to the island by blockading its chief provider, Venezuela, and threatening tariffs on any nation that stepped in to fill the void.
Get breaking Nationwide information
For information impacting Canada and world wide, join breaking information alerts delivered on to you once they occur.
Mexico, one other main provider, suspended oil shipments after Trump’s risk, which got here alongside a declaration that Cuba represents “an uncommon and extraordinary” nationwide safety risk to the U.S. as a result of alleged harbouring of overseas terrorist teams and Russian and Chinese language intelligence bases.
That assertion is “ridiculous,” Diaz stated Tuesday.
“This complete aggressive escalation in opposition to Cuba is predicated on a marketing campaign of lies. Furthermore, we should ask, is the USA appearing in accordance with worldwide regulation and the UN Constitution? Does anyone have the correct to impose his will by drive in opposition to one other nation?”
After the U.S. captured Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in early January, Trump predicted Cuba’s authorities was “able to fall” subsequent.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio advised senators at a listening to late final month that “we’d like to see a change” within the regime, however added the U.S. wouldn’t “make” that change.
Makes an attempt by some committee members to ask Diaz in regards to the Cuban authorities’s human rights report, together with allegations of jailing political activists, have been objected to by being outdoors the scope of the assembly’s deal with the present humanitarian disaster.
Diaz however defended Cuba’s authorities whereas acknowledging “we aren’t good.” He additionally denied allegations that Cuba has despatched its troopers to Ukraine to combat on behalf of Russia.
The gas scarcity has crippled Cuba’s electrical energy grid and compelled airways to droop flights after Havana’s essential airport warned of a monthlong jet gas scarcity, threatening Cuba’s struggling tourism trade that has grow to be more and more reliant on Canadian guests.
Cuba’s authorities has launched a gas rationing program, limiting some providers and decreasing workplace and college hours.
Cuba’s well being minister, José Ángel Portal Miranda, advised the Related Press final week that the nation’s already-debilitated health-care system has been pushed to the brink of collapse by elevated U.S. sanctions, threatening “primary human security.”
Diaz stated the health-care scenario is “tough,” together with restricted entry to meals, medication and gear. The dearth of gas has additionally affected the flexibility to switch sufferers to hospital and energy medical items, he stated.
“Cuba has an excellent well being system that provides entry to everyone with no funds, like in Canada, and we’re pleased with it,” he stated. “However it’s being sabotaged by this case of the U.S. blockade.”
Though Rubio and different U.S. officers have blamed Cuban financial mismanagement for the present disaster, Diaz stated the fault lies with the decades-long American financial blockade that has intensified below Trump.
“There’s a (suggestion) that Cuba is on this scenario as a result of it’s a failed nation, however it’s not true,” he stated. “If we’re failed, why do they take a lot curiosity in destroying us?”
Mark Entwistle, who served as Canada’s ambassador to Cuba within the Nineteen Nineties, advised World Information in an interview this month that Trump’s stress marketing campaign on Cuba places international locations like Canada in a “vice grip.”
“The Canadian authorities … must handle the U.S. relationship in a smart-minded means, (however on the identical time) no person needs to see a fellow nation of the Americas be bullied and crushed and probably fall into chaos,” he stated.
Diaz urged Canada to step in and accomplice with different “pals” of Cuba to assist its individuals.
International locations like Mexico which have despatched humanitarian assist, Diaz added, “say ‘the Cuban individuals don’t deserve this. We have to assist them.’ … I feel this can be a good instance of what will be completed.”
—with recordsdata from the Related Press
© 2026 World Information, a division of Corus Leisure Inc.
