Good morning. First of all, I would like to thank the members of the committee for having invited me to take stock of the human rights situation in Cuba.
First, if I may Mr. Chairman, I would like to inform committee members about the witness who preceeded us, Mr. Nelson Taylor Sol of the Cuban Canadian Foundation. Their magazine, which came out last week, published an ad that I will translate for you as follows: “Reward. If you know any Cuban who asked for refuge or who is here as an independent immigrant and is collaborating against the regime of Fidel Castro, please communicate with us. This information is strictly confidential. National Security Agency.”
This represents a monetary reward for the denunciation of Cubans having political opinions contrary to those of the Cuban-Canadian Foundation. This is illegal under Canadian legislation and it is the kind of abuse of human rights that we seek to expose. If the Cuban government were to publish those kinds of ads in Cuban newspapers, I would not be here to testify.
The three sections of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights open up too broad a field for me to try and provide an overview in the few minutes I have been given, particularly as we are talking about one of the most serious of subjects. This should never be taken lightly. Men and women have sacrificed their lives for these rights. Moreover, this is the case for 650,000 Iraqis, thousands of Afghans and thousands of American, European and Canadian soldiers.
Given that today is the 1st of May, International Workers Day, I thought it would be appropriate to focus my comments on the situation of labour law in Cuba. In the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, labour law is dealt with in Article 23 and its four clauses. The first of these subsections reads as follows:
Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment.
The Journal de Montréal recently informed us that a Cuban doctor living in Quebec had to drive a taxi because he did not have the right to practice his profession, even though it is highly in demand in our province, a situation that is unfortunately not uncommon and which clearly violates the first subsection of this article. In Cuba, there are also doctors driving taxis but they do so because they prefer the higher wage compared to what they would earn as doctors. They have made the choice, which they have the right to do. Their colleagues practice their profession without difficulty and that is the case for all Cuban workers. No Cuban will be refused access to a position in his own profession on the island.
The crisis in the Cuban sugar industry over the last few years has occurred without a single worker being thrown out on the street or becoming unemployed. On the contrary, every worker has been able to choose between early retirement or paid-retraining in the up and coming sector of their choice, with a job related to their training including a salary that is equal or superior to their original position. This is a social approach to industrial transformation that would be the envy of the wood and asbestos industries or of the manufacturing sectors that are in crisis in Canada.
Eliminating unemployment is one of the fundamental challenges of Cuban employment policies. At the end of 2005, Cuba reached a 1.9% unemployment rate, which means one can say that Cuba is a country with full employment. At the same time, the skilled worker shortage in Canada is increasing at the same rate as tuition fees, guaranteeing the most disadvantaged families sustainable unemployment. In the countries that are geographically and economically closest to Cuba, workers are facing recurring unemployment rates of 20 to 60%.
The second subsection of Article 23 stipulates the following: Everyone, without any discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work.
Cuba is the country that has the highest ratio of elected professional women and female managers. Sixty per cent of students registered in graduate programs are women. The last census before the Cuban Revolution in 1953 showed that only 17% of workers were women; one-third were domestic workers, 6% were technicians or professionals and only 2% were in management.
During the 2000 census, Cuban women represented 43.2% of workers, and two-thirds—66.4% precisely—were in professional and technical positions. Over 30% of Cuban politicians are women. The Cuban government includes six female ministers and almost 40 female deputy ministers, while 46% of the most important government corporations are managed by women. According to Canada's parliamentary website, women represent only 20% of elected officials, at the federal, provincial or territorial levels, a percentage that Cuba went beyond in 1993. As far as pay equity is concerned, this is only a recent achievement in Quebec, after years and years of unending union, political and legal battles, and it remains the subject of difficult struggles in many Canadian businesses.
The third subsection of article 23 reads as follows:
Everyone who works has the right to just and favourable remuneration ensuring for himself and his family an existence worthy of human dignity, and supplemented, if necessary, by other means of social protection.
Cuba considers that productive work with appropriate income is an essential condition for equity and social justice. Between the months of May and December 2005, Cuba granted substantial increases in allowances for recipients of welfare and social assistance, going as far as tripling benefits in some cases.
In 2005, they also began a process to increase the salaries of over two million workers. This measure includes the implementation of new wage scales, the improvement of interchange and function indicators, and it allows for the setting up of an additional payments instrument as recognition of the qualifications and quality of work.
The implementation of this suite of measures has increased the average salary by 282 Cuban pesos from the beginning of 2005, to 399 in June 2006; that is a 40% increase of the average wage over two years, which resulted in an 8% revaluation of the Cuban currency and the purchasing power of this currency.
In addition to these efforts made to improve wages, mention must be made of the subsidies on goods and services which make them available to Cubans for a fraction of their value. Mr. Taylor Sol was speaking earlier on about the fact that the average Cuban wage is $16, but the cost of living is not the same over there. In this way, the kilowatt hour of electricity costs 20 Cuban centavos, that is less than one Canadian cent. The weekly grocery shopping for a family of six, including fish, meat, fruits and vegetables costs two to three Canadian dollars. Also, a single average Cuban salary of 399 pesos will suffice to pay the electrical, telephone, gas and food bills for a family of six people. As for housing, 85% of Cubans are homeowners and therefore have absolutely nothing to pay in this regard. For the others, rent represents less than 10% of incomes. These are privileges Canadian minimum-wage workers would like to have.
I am sure the subcommittee will also be studying the cases of many Latin-American countries where the minimum wage is equal to or less than the Cuban wage, but where goods and services are not subsidized, which sentences a significant portion of the population to extreme poverty.
In her report on human rights in Cuba, the special representative of the United Nations High Commissioner, Christine Chanet, identified the US blockade as the primary holdup of economic social and cultural rights of the Cuban population, but also of civil and political rights.