It is hard to come to this committee and express that Canada's bilateral relationship with Cuba has failed the Cuban people, but this is what we feel. We feel that bilateral relations are there for exactly what you said, to provide support and consular support to tourists when they go to Cuba and to provide support to the many Canadian companies that invest in Cuba.
I was saying earlier that right now we, as a country, are enablers of a dictatorship. That dictatorship has now been in power for 67 years because they're good at repressing, and they have over 1,209 political prisoners, including prisoners like José Gabriel Barrenechea, who is an intellectual. When his mother was dying of cancer and was begging the regime to let her see her son one more time before passing away, the regime declined.
Therefore, yes, Canada should be applying Magnitsky sanctions to Cuban officials. We have the names of those judges who perform sham trials and summary trials and who put people in jail who are innocent. We have the name of the Minister of the Interior. We have the name of the Castro family and their descendants who are exploiting the Cuban population.
As I was saying, there is modern slavery in Cuba. There are Canadian companies.... There is a record of Cuba having sent workers and specialists here to Canada as a rotation with Sherritt. There is evidence. Evan Dyer from CBC did an article on it, on how Cuba was forcing those workers here in Canada to wire their salary. According to the Treasury Board, a specialist can make six digits here in Canada. The regime is forcing them to wire part of their salary back to Havana. They not only have modern slavery within the confines of the territory—Cuba is a prison island with a flag and many little prisons within it—but they put their borders wherever they want. There is transnational aggression as well.