BY MICHEL PRAIRIE
MONTREAL - On January 21-22, Canada's foreign affairs minister, Lloyd Axworthy, made a highly publicized trip to Cuba. This was the highest ranking visit to Cuba by a representative of the Canadian government since the trip made in 1976 by then Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau. While in Cuba, Axworthy met twice with president Fidel Castro and signed a joint statement on "human-rights issues" with Foreign Affairs minister Roberto Robaina.

Axworthy's trip was made in a context of sharpening tensions between Ottawa and Washington over the misnamed U.S. Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act of 1996, also known as the Helms-Burton law. At the same time, it signaled that despite its denunciations of aspects of Washington's legislation, Ottawa was bending to its pressures - adding its voice to those of U.S. imperialism's rivals in Europe, who recently joined its so-called "human rights" slanders against the Cuban revolution.

The Helms-Burton law was adopted by the U.S. government in March 1996. It tightened Washington's decades-long embargo against the Cuban revolution. And it deepened a trade drive by Washington against its imperialist allies - who are also its rivals - in Europe and Canada.

The legislation allows U.S. citizens, whose property was taken over by Cuban workers and farmers in years 1959-61 of the socialist revolution, to sue non-U.S. companies currently doing business in Cuba. It also allows Washington to bar officers and families of non-U.S. companies doing business in Cuba from entering U.S. territory.

Ottawa has sharply opposed these aspects of Helms-Burton as a violation of Canada's sovereignty and of its right to do business with whoever it wants. This includes the recent exclusion from the United States of top officials and their families at the Canadian-owned Sheritt International, which operates a state-owned nickel mine jointly with Cuba.

For the last few years, in the General Assembly of the United Nations, the Canadian government voted in favor of an annual resolution submitted by the Cuban government, condemning the U.S. embargo against Cuba. But it repeatedly made clear that its opposition was limited to the "extraterritorial" measures added to the embargo by the U.S. government in recent years. Ottawa never denounced the embargo.

Following the adoption of the Helms-Burton Act, Ottawa adopted counter-legislation that went into effect on January 1 of this year. This law rejects any rulings by U.S. courts made in the framework of Helms-Burton and allows Canadian citizens to initiate counter-suits in Canadian courts for monetary loss caused by the U.S. law. Ottawa also joined a challenge to Helms-Burton by the European Union before the World Trade Organization and has threatened to directly challenge the U.S. legislation under the North American Free Trade Agreement.

Cuba has investments from 30-40 Canadian companies and an annual trade volume between the two countries of about CAN$500 million (US$370 million).

White House criticizes Axworthy
Initially, the White House sharply criticized Axworthy's trip to Cuba. "It doesn't make sense to reward a dictator in our hemisphere who is completely behind the times. You reward him by sending your foreign minister down to visit, by having visits as usual, by trading. And we think that's wrong," said U.S. State Department spokesperson Nicholas Burns on January 21. The Toronto Globe and Mail, one of Canada's main dailies, expressed a similar position in an editorial published January 23.

To stress Ottawa's stance on Helms-Burton, Axworthy made a demonstrative visit to Sheritt International mining operations in Moa Bay, in addition to meeting with Castro and Robaina.

But his trip was used just as much as a political bludgeon against the Cuban government over the so-called human rights question. This in itself is not a new stance by Ottawa toward the Cuban revolutionary government. While Canada's rulers didn't join the U.S. embargo and maintained diplomatic relationships with Havana after the revolution, they never hid their deep class hostility for the workers' and farmers' government, established by the Cuban toilers and their effort to build a society based on human needs, not capitalist profits. But the added emphasis on the "human rights" question during Axworthy's visit marked a shift in Ottawa's tactics for dealing with the Cuban revolution. Most media report on the trip referred to Cuba as a dictatorship.

This question was played up in reports on the final joint statement by Axworthy and Robaina. It contains agreements to hold seminars and reciprocal visits involving judges, legislators, academics, and other professionals and visits to exchange experiences between both countries to "strengthen within [Cuba's] National Assembly of People's Power a citizens' complaint commission."

A Radio Havana broadcast reported, "The Cuban Foreign Ministry has said that to interpret inclusion of the issue of human rights in a broad and diverse joint declaration with Canada as implying the existence of problems in this context on the island is a blatant exaggeration."

Ottawa also tried to use the trip to Cuba to score some points against the Quebecois independence fight by leaking aspects of the meetings between Castro and Axworthy. According to the Canadian press, Castro was reported as saying, "It is essential for Cuba and for all countries that Canada remains strong and united because of the constructive role it plays in the world."

Speaking from Paris, Canadian prime minister Jean Chrétien reiterated Ottawa's long-held view that the U.S. embargo is ineffective in bringing capitalism back to Cuba. "They're just making it possible for Castro to stay in power, because he has an excuse, he can blame the Americans," said Chrétien. "Let them normalize the situation between Cuba and the United States and I don't think Mr. Castro will have it easier."

Commenting on the final agreement signed in Cuba, he added the next day, "The accord we signed yesterday with Cuba means that there will be a mediator at the National Assembly and a dialogue on human rights between Canada and Cuba."

A further point for Washington
Canada's heightened focus on the so-called human rights issue was not missed by the White House. "My reaction is I'm gratified that the Canadians, along with the Europeans, are now talking more to the Cubans about human rights and democratic reforms," declared U.S. president William Clinton. Burns had been even more direct, saying that Axworthy's trip was evidence that Canada was falling in line with the European Union (EU) on Cuba.

Both Clinton and Burns were referring to a December 2 resolution by the EU saying that its members would not expand economic aid to Cuba without "improvement" in human rights and political freedoms.

The EU adopted its anti-Cuba statement after the White House had indicated that some action like this would be necessary for the U.S. president to renew a six-month waiver suspending the section of Helms-Burton allowing suits against foreign companies doing business in Cuba. Clinton renewed the waiver on January 3.

The same kind of pressures explains the shift around Axworthy's trip to Cuba, not some new concerns by Ottawa about "democracy" and "human rights." Two weeks before Axworthy's visit to Cuba, a delegation including Jean Chrétien, a number of provincial prime ministers, and several hundred business persons from Canada visited south Korea in the very middle of a strike by tens of thousands of workers against antilabor laws adopted secretly by the Seoul government. Chrétien explained that he could understand the south Korean regime as "we too have trade unions in Canada."

As a junior imperialist power, the Canadian government has made crystal clear that it has the same objective as Washington in Cuba - to bring back capitalist rule. This is what they mean by "democracy" and a "market economy." But Canada's rulers have tactical differences with Washington about the embargo and, moreover, they had taken advantage of it to do some extra business, free from U.S. competition.

Faced with Washington's Helms-Burton law, however, the attraction of some marginal business with Cuba is sharply reduced for many Canadian bosses. According to the Globe and Mail, the annual trade exchange between Canada and Cuba is about half of the trading done in a single day between Canada and the United States.  
 
 
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