Foreign Affairs Committee on Feb. 26th, 2026

[The Chair, Liberal, Ahmed Hussen]

I call this meeting to order.

Welcome to meeting number 24 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development.

Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2) and the motion adopted by the committee on Thursday, February 12, 2026, the committee is meeting on the humanitarian situation in Cuba.

Today’s meeting is taking place in a hybrid format, pursuant to the Standing Orders. Members are attending in person in the room and remotely using the Zoom application.

I would like to ask all in-person participants to consult the guidelines on the cards on the table. These measures are in place to protect the health and safety of both the participants and the interpreters.

Please note that today's meeting is taking place, exceptionally, with interpretation services in Spanish in addition to the two official languages. We would like to thank the team of interpreters who are with us today. Members and witnesses simply need to select the appropriate channel on the console located on the seat in the room or through the Zoom application.

I would like to make a few more comments.

Please wait until I recognize you by name before speaking. I remind you that all comments should be addressed through the chair. For members in the room, if you wish to speak, please raise your hand. For members on Zoom, please use the “raise hand” function.

I would now like to welcome our witnesses for the first hour.

From the Cuban Canadians Coalition, we have Kirenia Carbonell, public relations director; Raimet Martinez, president; and David Mederos, member.

From Citizens and Freedom, we have Carolina Barrero Ferrer, president and chief executive officer, by video conference.

Up to five minutes will be given for opening remarks, after which we'll proceed with rounds of questions.

I now invite Kirenia Carbonell, public relations director of the Cuban Canadians Coalition, to make an opening statement of up to five minutes.

Bienvenido.

[Kirenia Carbonell, Public Relations Director, Cuban Canadians Coalition]

Gracias.

Mr. Chair and honourable members of the committee, thank you for this invitation. My name is Kirenia Carbonell, representing the Cuban Canadians Coalition.

I am here to present evidence of a multi-dimensional collapse. Cuba is currently enduring its most severe humanitarian and economic crisis in modern history. This is not merely an opinion. It is verifiable through official statistics, independent analysis and the lived reality of millions.

On the myth of external causality, let me be clear: This crisis is not a recent by-product of external policy. Cuba's structural collapse predates recent sanctions. Between 2020 and 2024, GDP contracted by over 15%. This is a stagnant, unproductive economy by design. Agricultural production has plummeted, forcing a fertile island to import most of its food. Inflation has reached triple digits, meaning salaries and pensions no longer cover basic nutrition. These are the results of domestic policy decisions and centralized mismanagement, not foreign intervention.

On the demographic and energy collapse, the human cost is staggering. Since 2022, over half a million Cubans—roughly 5% of the population—have fled to the United States alone. This is an unprecedented demographic hemorrhage in peacetime. Compounding this is a total energy failure. While the regime blames fuel shortages, the truth is that there have been decades of neglect. Cuba's thermoelectric plants are over 40 to 50 years old. No large-scale modernization has occurred since the 1990s. While citizens suffer blackouts of up to 22 hours a day, the regime has prioritized high-end hotel construction over the national power grid.

On health and misplaced priorities, the public health system, once the regime's flagship, has disintegrated. There is a critical shortage of basic medicines and surgical supplies. Official investment data reveals a chilling reality: The regime allocates 14 to 15 times more capital to tourism infrastructure than to health care. These are not anecdotes. They are budgetary choices. While children lack antibiotics, military-run conglomerates like GAESA continue to expand luxury hotel portfolios and dollar-only retail chains.

On repression and political prisoners, economic failure is inseparable from political repression. Since the peaceful protests of July 11, 2021, the regime has imprisoned over 1,000 political prisoners, including artists, journalists, academics and minors. Humanitarian aid cannot be effectively managed in a country where civil society is criminalized and aid distribution is monopolized by the very structures responsible for the crisis.

Therefore, we offer recommendations to Canada, as Canada's long-standing engagement with Cuba provides both leverage and responsibility. We respectfully urge the Government of Canada to direct aid by supporting humanitarian assistance exclusively through independent faith-based and civil society channels, to advocate by calling consistently for the unconditional release of all political prisoners, to encourage accountability by ensuring that Canadian engagement and trade do not benefit military-controlled entities, and to offer support by increasing protection for independent journalists and human rights defenders.

In conclusion, Canada must stand with the Cuban people, not by legitimizing a repressive status quo but by aligning policy with transparency, accountability and human dignity.

Thank you. I welcome your questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ahmed Hussen]

Thank you very much.

I now invite Ms. Carolina Barrero Ferrer to make an opening statement.

[Carolina Barrero Ferrer, President and Chief Executive Officer, Citizens and Freedom]

[Witness spoke in Spanish, interpreted as follows:]

Honourable chair of the committee and distinguished members, it is an honour to appear before this institution, whose tradition of democratic rigour and commitment to international law represents precisely what millions of Cubans have given up their freedom for—and many of them, their lives.

Allow me to begin by framing what the committee has called a “humanitarian crisis” with the considerable precision that is required for rigorous political analysis. What Cuba is suffering is not a crisis in the technical sense of the term. A crisis by definition is a temporary breakdown of the pre-existing order. What Cuba is going through right now is qualitatively different. It is the structural, systematic and sustained result of a model of governance that has subordinated the well-being of the population to the preservation of the power of a military and family elite.

The blackouts that have recently come to the attention of international media and opinion are not merely the product of scarcity but the result of prioritization. For years, Cuba has received oil at preferential prices, or for free, from Venezuela, Mexico and Russia. More than 60% of that supply was sold to China and other countries, while Cubans were plunged into darkness. Power plants operated with obsolete components, and the electrical grid collapsed due to lack of maintenance.

At this very moment, as we meet, a toxic cloud covers Havana. Garbage has been burning for more than a week without prior sorting or health protocols. Plastics, chemical compounds and highly toxic materials are burning throughout the city. The toxic smoke is being breathed in by children, the elderly and the sick. These are people who cannot demand protection because exercising the right to complain, even on social media, is sufficient cause for arbitrary detention, degrading treatment and judicial condemnation without due process.

The cases of Ernesto Ricardo, Kamil Zayas, Ankeileys Guerra and Sulmira Martínez—the latter sentenced to five years of imprisonment—for posting content on social media are just some of the most recent examples.

In light of this situation, I would like to draw your attention to a fact that economic analysis cannot overlook. GAESA, the business conglomerate controlled by the armed forces, recorded $18.5 billion in cash on its 2024 balance sheet—$18.5 billion in a country with no medicines in its hospitals, with schools that are falling apart, with a collapsed health infrastructure—while the Tower K stands as an unequivocal monument to the structural inequality that sustains the system: accumulation at the top and abject poverty at the bottom.

It is estimated that over the last 15 years, new hotels have been built by GAESA to the tune of $24 billion. With half of that, it would have been possible to refurbish the national electrical grid, but it is not the priority of the oppressive and corrupt regime to truly take care of the best interests of the Cuban people.

Therefore, I would now like to make three recommendations respectfully to the committee.

First, all bilateral relationships with Cuba that do not have the explicit condition of protecting the civil and political rights of Cubans help to sustain the regime that caused the crisis we are discussing today. When humanitarian aid without conditions is provided to a regime that uses scarcity to maintain the population in misery, it is a terrible thing.

Also, Canada has the authority and the institutional tools that are necessary to ensure sanctions against officials who are responsible for severe human rights violations. The principle of individual responsibility that is enshrined in international law makes it possible for that kind of responsibility to be brought to the fore.

Finally, the unconditional freeing of political prisoners must be a non-negotiable prerequisite for any bilateral relationship between Canada and Cuba.

Ladies and gentlemen, the Cuban people are not asking the world to solve Cuba's problems. They are asking the world to stop legitimizing those who have caused the problem. History will judge democracies not only for what they have built but for what they consented to when they had the moral authority and the institutional tools to do something different. This committee has that authority, and it has that opportunity. I ask you to, please, act accordingly.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ahmed Hussen]

Thank you very much for your remarks.

I now open the floor for questions, beginning with MP Rood.

You have six minutes.

[Lianne Rood, Conservative, Middlesex—London, ON]

Thank you very much.

Thank you to the witnesses for those very touching testimonies in your opening remarks.

There have been 67 years of communist rule, and Cuba is in the midst of its worst humanitarian crisis since the “special period”. Why do you believe that it is not external factors but the government's centralized economic mismanagement that is the primary driver of the shortages of food, medicine, electricity and clean water that ordinary Cubans are suffering from today? I know you touched on it a bit in your opening statement. Go ahead.

[Kirenia Carbonell]

Thank you for your question.

I would like to start by saying that the current regime utilizes hunger as a control tool. Therefore, as I was saying, they were able to invest in over 400 luxury hotels in Cuba—there are around 400, some of which are four-star and five-star hotels—and, while they keep building those hotels and the supply chain, miraculously, is not affected in keeping those hotels stocked, the Cuban population lacks the basics.

However, I would like to highlight that this did not start in January. We have been suffering from hunger for decades. It is estimated that 89% of the population lives in extreme poverty. We have bodegas, what we call, in Canada, “convenience stores”. Each town might have one. Those shelves have been empty since...ever since I can remember.

We do have pharmacies, and we do have clinics. However, due to the immigration crisis, not only are we lacking medicine but we are also lacking the specialists, because Cuba exports specialists in the health sector. What they are doing, actually, is contributing to modern slavery, because while those countries pay the government a salary for the specialists, the government retains their passports and their salaries, and it pays only a percentage of what their actual salaries are. Their salaries get retained in Havana, and none of that is provided to the health personnel in those missions. Basically, it is a way to keep control of the population.

Imagine: Even here in Canada, over 60% of the population is interested in political affairs. In Cuba, people are interested in knowing what their next meal is going to be. Mothers do not themselves have time to be invested in politics, and those mothers who are brave right now are behind bars. At one point we had over 97 women behind bars for expressing themselves—for taking to the street, specifically. They are occupied with trying to find out where they can find another glass of milk for their children.

I do know that the reality is so dark that it's hard to put into words what Cuban people are going through. However, I'm doing my best to depict the reality on the island.

[Lianne Rood, Conservative, Middlesex—London, ON]

Thank you for that.

Ms. Barrero Ferrer, you alluded in your remarks to leaked secret records showing that Cuba's military conglomerate GAESA is sitting on up to $18 billion in cash reserves in dollar accounts—money from tourism, retail and ports controlled by the Revolutionary Armed Forces—while ordinary Cubans endure the daily blackouts. They dig through garbage for food and die from lack of basic medicine, as you've said.

In your view, doesn't this prove that the humanitarian crisis is caused by 67 years of corrupt communist mismanagement and elite hoarding, rather than external factors?

[Carolina Barrero Ferrer]

[Witness spoke in Spanish, interpreted as follows:]

For those who may not know, GAESA is the military business that controls 60% of the economy and almost 90% of the finances for all of Cuba. It's a business conglomerate that is directly controlled by the armed forces and by the Castro family. In 2024, its financial statements showed that they had up to $18.5 billion in cash reserves. That reserve is sufficient to solve a great number of the difficulties Cuba is experiencing right now in the humanitarian crisis. It definitively shows that the priorities of the regime have not been the well-being of the Cuban people.

The other thing it shows is that there have been a number of initiatives to provide humanitarian aid to Cuba over the years. Most of them have been resold to the population. It happened with mattresses. We heard reports that free mattresses arrived in the country, but people had to buy them using hard currency. We know that there are things coming from Europe as well. They're sent to rural areas. They're saying that they're receiving that humanitarian aid, but they have to pay for it. We have very clear evidence and proof. We see hundreds of hotels where there are all kinds of vacancies, yet money is not getting invested elsewhere. A lot of countries, such as Canada, send tourists to Cuba, and the regime keeps building more and more hotels. Why? For whom? Those hotels rooms are empty. The regime should build hospitals and schools.

When we say that the regime is the structural cause of the crisis in Cuba, it's because if the regime really wanted to take care of people, it could have used the resources it has had over these almost 70 years. We have seen that this is not in the interest of the regime. As my colleague was saying, the regime wants people who are hungry so that it can control them.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ahmed Hussen]

Unfortunately, we have to go to the next colleague.

Steven Guilbeault, you have six minutes.

[Steven Guilbeault, Liberal, Laurier—Sainte-Marie, QC]

Thank you, Mr. President.

Thank you very much for being here with us.

Yesterday, as you know, Foreign Affairs Minister Anand announced $8.3 million in aid to Cuba, which is roughly a doubling of what Canada has sent toward the country on a yearly basis. How can Canada's humanitarian assistance, particularly funding that's directed to the World Food Programme, UNICEF or the Red Cross, be used on the ground to support vulnerable Cubans?

[Kirenia Carbonell]

I would like to start by saying that we are very grateful every time Canada as a government and Canadians try to help the Cuban population. Two things are concerning in this case. I will give you my point of view from the Cuban perspective and also from the Canadian perspective.

From the Cuban perspective, we know, for example, that the $8.3 million will go to the organizations you just mentioned. What we are worried about is who those organizations are partnering with in Cuba. The government has a record of portraying a few non-governmental organizations, such as Federación de Mujeres Cubanas and Central de Trabajadores de Cuba, as independent. Although the regime portrays those organizations as independent, they are not. They are part of the structure of failure that we are enduring.

Rather than asking Canada to refrain from sending aid, what I would ask is that the aid be distributed by faith-based institutions, let's say, and distributed by civil society, because the regime will divert it. As Ms. Barrero was saying, there is evidence of tourists in hotels in Cuba finding some of the packages that were sent in the past. They do not reach the population. I left the island 23 years ago. I keep in touch with my family. I come from the Holguín province. Canada has been helping Cuba for decades. No one in my family and no one in our province has received that help.

We do come here with concerns, but we are also offering solutions. We can later distribute to the committee, via separate correspondence, those points of contact within Cuba who are willing and capable. They have the human resources. They have the capability to distribute the aid throughout the island. We have confirmation from Caritas in Havana that they do not have capacity to distribute any help at the moment, because the U.S. administration has been providing aid to Cuba. Also, the representative from the U.S. has actually been visiting provinces and speaking directly to the people to ensure that they have an accountability and verification process to make sure it reaches the people. I would suggest that Canada do the same, should it wish to.

Thank you.

[Steven Guilbeault, Liberal, Laurier—Sainte-Marie, QC]

Your suggestion is that rather than work with organizations like the ones I mentioned—the Red Cross, UNICEF or the World Food Programme—we work with faith-based organizations.

I believe we already do some of that. Are you suggesting that we should refrain from working with UN agencies?

[Kirenia Carbonell]

No, that's not what I'm referring to. Canada will work with the partnerships that are already established. I'm saying that those partnerships, in return, should they be willing to do so.... We can provide the point of contact for civil society, so that the help actually reaches people.

You see, should UNICEF or the World Food Programme distribute the help with a Cuban partnership, political prisoners and the families of political prisoners won't see that. We have, from the coalition, sent medicine to Cuba. I'll tell you a story quickly. We sent medicine for children who were sick in Havana with high fevers. The mother didn't have a thermometer to take their temperature, so we sent a package. They deployed three police cars to the residence of the person who was in charge of collecting the medicine and distributing it among the several children of political prisoners. That's the reality in Cuba. Therefore, the same is going to happen to the aid that Canada is sending.

The other thing I wanted to add, if I may, is that if Canada sends dollars to Cuba—funding or financial aid—for those partnerships within the island, they will end up in the retail “dollarized” stores that belong to the regime. We might as well send the $8.3 million directly to GAESA funds.

From the Canadian point of view that I mentioned earlier, life in Canada is hard. Inflation in Canada has gone up to 7.1%. Why would taxpayers' money be funding a military dictatorship that has over $18 billion in assets? That I do not comprehend. Instead, maybe engage in firm dialogue that says that there needs to be reform in Cuba after 67 years. There need to be elections. There needs to be a peaceful transition to democracy.

We would love to see that from Canada. We should not continue, as a country, to funnel financial assistance to a dictatorship that is not budging. They don't want to democratize the island. They don't want to implement reforms for free enterprise.

Why does Cuba have to have Canadian companies investing in our island? We Cubans cannot do that. Here in Canada, when we prepare the procurement paperwork, we have to aim for 85% Canadian content in our paperwork and our procurements, because we want to develop Canadian industry. Why, if we want to do that as a country, can't Cubans develop their industry in Cuba? Why do Canadian companies have to be enabling a regime to exploit its workers? Again, that money.... For example, Sherritt International has been polluting my province of Moa. The municipality where Sherritt operates is an environmental disaster. Sherritt pays the funds to the Cuban government. They have employment agencies that collect the salaries, and then the government keeps the salary and only pays a portion. We don't have independent unions, so Canadian companies are contributing to modern slavery in Cuba.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ahmed Hussen]

Thank you very much.

Monsieur Brunelle-Duceppe, you have six minutes.

[Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe, Bloc, Lac-Saint-Jean, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The member speaks in Spanish and his remarks are interpreted as follows:]

I will speak in French, because my political party asks me to do so.

[French]

Ms. Carbonell, I just want to make sure I understand correctly. The money that was recently released by Canada will normally be channelled through two envelopes: the World Food Programme and the United Nations Children’s Fund. Do I understand correctly that these organizations, which habitually deliver humanitarian aid all over the world, would be unable to deliver this aid directly to the people on the island of Cuba?

[Kirenia Carbonell]

I cannot speak about how they operate on the ground. What I can say is that those organizations that you mentioned should coordinate with entities that are not part of the regime. The regime is creating the humanitarian crisis that we have right now. As I said, if they are in charge of distributing aid provided to Cubans, it is going to go to their military hospitals, to their mansions, to the elite in Cuba and to the hotels. There are about 35 enterprises under GAESA.

Therefore, what we are suggesting is that the aid, which hopefully won't be in cash.... Hopefully, it's not going to be Canadian funds, because it will end up in the regime stores. Other stores with national currency.... You see, Cubans get paid in the national currency, but to get the essentials, they have to end up in those stores where the currency is only dollars. Regardless, the funding is going to end up on the books of GAESA.

[Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe, Bloc, Lac-Saint-Jean, QC]

We’ll see. Accountability is often part of the equation. These organizations are still competent organizations. We’ll see if you’re right.

I would like to ask you whether, in your opinion, it is entirely possible to disagree with the political ideals of a regime, while also disagreeing with international policies that directly oppress a population.

[Kirenia Carbonell]

When they come from the government, policies in Cuba affect the population. There is not one policy in Cuba that does not affect the population.

[Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe, Bloc, Lac-Saint-Jean, QC]

I was talking about international politics. I was talking about U.S. policy.

[Kirenia Carbonell]

I'm sorry. It's because you're so close that the French and the English—

[Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe, Bloc, Lac-Saint-Jean, QC]

I’m sorry. I’ll speak more slowly.

When it comes to human rights, don’t you think that American policy has had a much greater impact on the population than the regime itself?

There has been a blockade in Cuba for 66 years and the regime is still in place. What we are seeing now is a humanitarian crisis that is, I think, one of the most serious Cuba has ever experienced, and it is the population that is suffering. I am not making any judgments. I am just asking you a question.

I am referring to American policies.

Based on what I am seeing at the moment, I do not see the regime falling. However, I do see the population suffering. Is there not cause for concern?

[Kirenia Carbonell]

I understand what you mean. It is true that we have that reflex to be concerned about the external policy of the U.S. administration, but the real cause of the suffering in Cuba is not external. As I just said, the administration in Cuba is capable of running the repression and it is capable of running the resorts. Should it wish, it would also be able to run health care and the education system, but the Cuban regime does not care about the suffering of the people.

We are talking about a regime that, yesterday, should have said, “We are not able to run this island. We have a centralized economy that is not working. We're going to have democracy, and we're going to have economic reforms.” However, they're in their corner, blaming everybody else and their mother instead of having accountability and saying it is their failed policies that have given us 67 years of dictatorship.

For example, the regime is able to procure personal protective equipment from a NATO country. It is mind-boggling that a NATO country like Spain has procured full operational gear for the Cuban forces, when it knows those forces are deployed against the unarmed civilian population when we take to the street to demand freedom, and it knows those forces are deployed to Venezuela to be the first inner circle of Maduro's narcoterrorist regime.

They tell the world at the UN assembly and they come here to Canada, to this House to spout lies, and they tell the world that no Cuban troops are in Ukraine and no Cuban troops are in Venezuela. They return to Cuba in shoeboxes, and the world sees that they're lying.

[Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe, Bloc, Lac-Saint-Jean, QC]

And—

[The Chair, Liberal, Ahmed Hussen]

Mr. Brunelle‑Duceppe, Ms. Barrero Ferrer would like to answer your question.

Go ahead, Madame Ferrer.