Subcommittee on International Human Rights Committee on May 29th, 2007

[Caroline St-Hilaire, Bloc, Longueuil—Pierre-Boucher, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Good day, gentlemen.

First of all, thank you for your presentations. I want you to understand how committee members feel after hearing your testimony. We have heard many different accounts, including a more personal story and another about workers.

You spoke about Canada. Like any other world country, Canada is not perfect, but we are interested in the human rights situation in Cuba. Both of you seem to be saying that based on your experience, the situation is not that bad. Please correct me if I have misunderstood you. However, you need to understand that organizations like Amnesty International and other NGOs have told us that problems likely do exist, particularly with respect to prisoners of conscience.

I realize that you have not encountered problems of this nature, but we have heard testimony to that effect. Based on what you are saying , the problem, as Mr. Boyle pointed out, is likely the embargo against Cuba.

Have I understood you correctly?

[Peter J. Boyle]

Yes, the embargo is one of the main problems. It's actually, in my opinion and a lot of the workers' opinions down there, the biggest problem. I understand it's to the point where they tell me if a ship comes into a Cuban port, it can't go into an American port for six months.

If Canada, for instance, sells wheelbarrows to the U.S. and they ship wheelbarrow tires down to Cuba, then they can't sell to the American companies. It's this type of thing. They do get American goods eventually, I think some drugs and things like that. We take down a lot with us, but they're not very far away, and it's very expensive when they have to ship them halfway around the world to get them.

One of the biggest problems is transportation in Cuba. Just recently when we went there, they had 200 brand-new buses from China, and it's very expensive to bring them in from there. Transportation is probably one of the major problems in Cuba that we noticed and that the workers told us about.

[Caroline St-Hilaire, Bloc, Longueuil—Pierre-Boucher, QC]

Mr. Boyle, for clarification purposes, can you tell us again who exactly you work with?

[Peter J. Boyle]

With the twinning with Kingston and Cienfuegos, we set up a relationship with the labour council and the labour movement and are encouraging this with other labour councils across Ontario. We meet with labour unions. In 2004 I met with the local labour council president. And because I'm a steelworker working in an aluminum plant in Kingston, I also met with the steelworker president of the local plant down there and a number of other workers. At that time we were on a tour for three days with the union on our bus. We had a bus and toured all over. We sat at night and talked. We had our own interpreters with us, people from the labour movement who could speak Spanish. We had a lot of discussions at night, and in the daytime I talked to workers wherever I could find them, especially about the special period, because that is the debate I like raising with them, whether they think they are still in it or out of it and how they felt about it.

There is a resilience, a real sense of pride from everyone I talked to about being able to endure throughout the embargo with very little. I saw an old car one time and it was running like a top. The fellow showed it to me and I looked at the carburetor and it looked like the worst contraption you could ever see. That old '48 or '49 car was running perfectly. They are very ingenious. They have very little to work with, but they make the most of it.

A lot of the labour leaders in Cuba, unlike myself or a lot of others, are highly educated, a lot more educated than most people in Canada. They have a very good education system, a very good health care system.

On the last trip down, we actually talked to some Venezuelan doctors at the provincial hospital in Cienfuegos and watched a live cataract surgery and talked afterwards to the doctors who were doing the surgery. That is part of their need to get around the issue of the embargo by getting oil from South America.

[Caroline St-Hilaire, Bloc, Longueuil—Pierre-Boucher, QC]

I have one last question for you, Mr. Boyle. I do not know how long you have been doing this. Perhaps I misunderstood you again. I don't think the Cubans have a problem with becoming unionized. To your knowledge and based on your experience, has any union leader or worker ever been jailed for union-related reasons?

[Peter J. Boyle]

No, I have never heard, never talked.... As a matter of fact, the current general secretary of the provincial union in Cienfuegos province--I can't remember his name and I didn't write it down--was very proud to tell us, in this latest venture we had down there, about how independent they were. We noticed that we were free to go wherever we wanted to, free to talk, free to sit around at night with a bottle of rum and a cigar and talk about worker-to-worker issues. I have not heard or seen any restrictions while I have been there, nor have I heard it from the workers.

[Caroline St-Hilaire, Bloc, Longueuil—Pierre-Boucher, QC]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Jason Kenney]

Thank you, Madame St-Hilaire.

Mr. Sorenson.

[Kevin Sorenson, Conservative, Crowfoot, AB]

Thank you for being here today.

I must say that your testimony today is much different from what we have heard from others who have been here, many former Cuban residents who have spoken about human rights violations and I would even say atrocities.

Mr. Silva brought up the 75 dissidents who were arrested. Many of them were arrested for having opinions that varied from those of the government of Cuba. They were arrested for stating those opinions verbally—a group of university students talking about freedoms that they should have and enjoy—and some of them were imprisoned for up to eight years, I think it was, in the case of one of the individuals who sat here at this table. They spoke with passion and came close to breaking down almost when they talked about the atrocities happening in Cuba. That's why we're studying Cuba. We're looking at Cuba because it's been recognized as a country where human rights violations are very prevalent, and people are willing to speak of these. But your testimony today has given no indication of any violations at all.

Some of them were arrested for communicating with groups who are concerned about human rights. Even that was suppressed, and they were put in prison. They were imprisoned for possessing a radio, a battery charger. Perhaps that's why they just replaced the battery, because some of them were in possession of a battery charger, video equipment or publications, so they were imprisoned.

Canada is one of the largest donors of aid to Cuba. It's not much, a little over $10 million a year, but that $10 million goes towards helping with good governance by exposing them to our Canadian values and helping them to build democratic institutions and to succeed in the world economy.

If that is the mandate of how we give our aid, should we suspend that aid?

[Henry Hynd]

Well, in my opinion, I think Canada should continue to have a close relationship with Cuba. I think that any aid we give them would be a beneficial thing.

[Kevin Sorenson, Conservative, Crowfoot, AB]

Why? I mean—

[Henry Hynd]

Well, my experience—

[Kevin Sorenson, Conservative, Crowfoot, AB]

The workers are working—

[Henry Hynd]

If you let me answer, I can—

[Kevin Sorenson, Conservative, Crowfoot, AB]

No, it's my time, and I'll ask the questions.

Your testimony is that the workers are happy, the economy has been hurt by the embargo by the United States, but generally speaking, everyone is happy. There are no basic human rights violations.

The aid that we have is targeted towards some of that. If that's why we're targeting the aid, and if there are no violations, then in your opinion maybe we should stop that aid.

[Henry Hynd]

Let me answer.

I didn't suggest any of the things you just said. I talked about my personal experiences in Cuba, the many people I've met, the many people I've engaged in discussions with. I've never heard of many of the things you're saying. I've talked to Cubans who live in Canada and I've never heard them claim the reason they came to Canada was that they were being put in prison or being denied rights, or anything like that.

I can only talk about my experience—and it's long. From 1976, at least twice a year, until today, I've been in Cuba and I've engaged people every time I went—not the same people, but different people, and some of the same people. Cubans are healthy, they're happy, they're well educated, and those are three things that I think are very important.

I don't know about the issues you're talking about, but I intend to inquire about them on my next visit to Cuba.

[Kevin Sorenson, Conservative, Crowfoot, AB]

I would encourage you to also maybe get the--

[Henry Hynd]

I would encourage you to have a trip to Cuba, where you'll have a wonderful time. Engage in some discussion with the people you meet, because most of the Cubans I've met are very hospitable. They're very direct; if they've got problems, they'll tell you about them. And there are problems in Cuba. It's like our society: it's imperfect.

[Kevin Sorenson, Conservative, Crowfoot, AB]

Thank you.

[Peter J. Boyle]

It's funny you raised the issue about somebody going to jail for a radio. On the most recent trip, I actually went out and bought some gifts for the union folks down there, and one of them was a wind-up--not battery-powered--radio, like those lights. I took a number of those too, and gave them to the union there.

They're building a new union centre in Cienfuegos, and they were very happy to receive it. They said it was great to have something that doesn't need batteries, because they're hard to get down there, and you can crank it up. They said they'd use it to get news around when there are disasters like hurricanes and other things.

I'm surprised to hear.... They accepted my gift of a batteryless crank-up radio with the weather channels on it and everything as being a really nice gift to get, along with flashlights and other things--things that are in short supply because of the embargo, things that they need in cases of emergency.

I ask this committee to maintain the support. I have not heard of any human rights complaints from the workers. We've been to workers' training centres. I've talked to individual workers out on the street, people sweeping and things like that, and engaged them in conversation everywhere I go when I go down there, whether it's vacation or whatever, and I haven't heard of any complaints of these sorts. The complaints are really that they don't have what they need to move forward in their economy, because of the embargo. I hope this committee takes that into account and continues their help to Cuba.

When they're restricted from getting it from the rest of the world, Canada needs to play an important role there and help out, as they've been doing for a number of years.

Thank you.

[Henry Hynd]

I would just add that in any Cuban home I've been in, they have television, they have radio, they have music centres, and some people have computers, so I'm surprised that somebody in Cuba got put in jail because they had a radio; I'm very surprised about that.

[An hon. member]

We'll note your surprise.

[The Chair, Conservative, Jason Kenney]

Thank you.

We'll pass now to Mr. Marston.

[Wayne Marston, NDP, Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON]

Certainly we've got a divergence of testimony here, and I'm not overly surprised. Part of the reason I suggested these two witnesses is that I've known both of these gentlemen in excess of 20 years and I knew they had a perspective on Cuba that we hadn't heard and that I thought was important to hear.

Testimony said earlier that the rate of unemployment in Cuba is 1.7%, and the rest of Latin America runs 20% to 60%. You were speaking of the health of Cubans. How would you see the general welfare, compared to the rest of Latin America? Have you travelled elsewhere?

[Peter J. Boyle]

I travelled to Brazil a number of years ago with the union, in 1999. There's no country in the world without problems.

One thing I did notice about Cuba was the unique perspective they take toward workers. They don't lay off workers there. They may not have enough material or enough work to go around, but everybody goes to work every day, and there's a sense of pride for workers, whereas here you'd get laid off. I've been laid off, been without a job, and had to go to an unemployment line. That doesn't happen there; if there's work for an hour, they go and work for an hour, and then they go home.

I talked to a fellow who was an economist at a cement factory in Cienfuegos. He worked for four hours in the morning, from seven until eleven, because that's all the work they had to do. I found it to be quite amazing and quite unique that nobody gets laid off from work because of a shortage of materials or anything. They'll go to work and work for an hour or eight hours or six hours or two hours--whatever work's available--and maintain their job. It maintains their dignity when they maintain their job, and that's unique to Cuba. I've never seen it anywhere else.