I certainly support you, Mr. Broadbent, in terms of this conference. Definitely, it's quite interesting too. It depends on the content of this conference and the fact that the offer is coming from Canada to Havana to organize something like that. It could be quite interesting to see the reaction coming from the Cuban government, how far they are open to talk to Canada, not just about friendship and economic cooperation, but about sensitive things as well. My personal opinion would be that your government will not receive any positive response.
The other comment about the money going through CIDA to Cuba...at this time, what I see as very important, and maybe not such expensive help, is the fact that the advantage to the Cuban government is that the government controls information. So what my embassy is trying to do is open public access to the Internet for Cuban citizens. Unfortunately, because of the repression coming from the Cuban government, we are still not very successful at this.
Maybe Canada has the advantage to open some cultural information centres, or whatever we want to call them, not just in Havana but maybe outside Havana, as a source of information coming from the free world to the Cuban population. This is maybe the easiest and quickest way for your government to open places where the people from Cuba could come and receive information other than information coming to them via the propaganda television, newspapers, etc. To make free access to information is the easiest way to support a civil society right now that's still in the process of creating the structures, but maybe this could help.
To support and talk to the newly born or stillborn political parties, I think definitely this is what we have to do to talk to these structures. Political parties represent the backbone of civil society. I don't say that we have to talk just to the political parties, but it would definitely be the biggest mistake to exclude these structures from our dialogue with the Cuban population.