Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the member for Thornhill for his contributions and his introduction to this debate. He has made a lot of great points. This is an important motion we have before us today. It shows how poor the Prime Minister's judgment has been with the statement he issued upon Fidel Castro's death.
Furthermore, when I asked the Minister of Foreign Affairs earlier this week why the Prime Minister was an apologist for dictators and why he was not saying more about empowering the Cuban people, he told me I should learn Spanish. That was his answer.
When the Prime Minister went sunbathing recently in Cuba, he had an opportunity to speak up about democracy. He ever so briefly mentioned human rights. I actually took the time to listen to the entire transcript, and “democracy” never left his lips when speaking to students at a Havana university.
Let us compare that to what the U.S. president, Barack Obama, said when he was there visiting in March 2016. That transcript is fully available on the state department's website. According to that transcript he said “We continue, as President Castro indicated, to have some very serious differences, including on democracy and human rights”.
He went on to say further to describe these. He said:
...the United States will continue to speak up on behalf of democracy, including the right of the Cuban people to decide their own future. We’ll speak out on behalf of universal human rights, including freedom of speech and assembly and religion. Indeed, I look forward to meeting with and hearing from Cuban civil society leaders tomorrow.
The Prime Minister did none of this when he was there. “Democracy” did not even leave his lips. Perhaps he did not want to insult the Castro family, with whom he shares such a close relationship.
President Barack Obama continued by saying, “I’m very pleased that we’ve agreed to hold our next U.S.-Cuba human rights dialogue here in Havana this year”, none of which the Prime Minister said.
I wonder why the government continues to romanticize Cuba when even Tony Keller in The Globe and Mail called Cuba “the East Berlin of the Caribbean”, a fitting description, I believe, of what Cuba has become under Fidel.
Mr. Castro and his best buddy Che Guevara were murderers, oppressors as bad as Batista, and let us not forget both of them brought the world closer to nuclear war than it has ever been since. Just as one cannot kill one's way to a better society, one cannot praise murderous dictators when they die, especially when they die in the comfort of their own bed, surrounded by their family, unlike their many victims.
I remember the sanctimonious advice I got from the Minister of Foreign Affairs about being stuck in the past, so let us only talk about the very recent two years.
According to a U.S. Department of State report on Cuba's human rights record, the Communist Party is “the only legal party”, and all candidates for political office must be pre-approved. It pointed out that when the United States re-established relations with Cuba, the regime at first released 53 political prisoners, six of whom would later be rearrested and given even longer prison sentences for their human rights activism. When Fidel Castro handed over power to his brother, 50 other political prisoners who had been held since 2003, for being accused of being mercenaries in the employ of the United States government, were then released on the sole condition that they be exiled to Spain. These included human rights defenders, trade unionists, journalists, and many other critics of the Castro regime.
That same U.S. state department report goes on to enumerate the many human rights violations of the Castro regime. It talked about the use of government threats, physical assault, intimidation, violence organized by the government, counter-protests against peaceful dissent, harassment and detentions to prevent free expression, and peaceful assembly. It goes on to describe harsh prison conditions, arbitrary short-term politically motivated detentions and arrests, selective prosecution, denial of fair trial, and travel restrictions.
On trials, it says they bring people in and try them on the same day, with spurious evidence, basically no evidence, and throw people into prison, still today, under the new Castro regime. It is the basic continuation of what they had started 30 or 40 years ago.
The report goes on to state:
The government did not respect freedom of speech and press, restricted internet access, maintained a monopoly on media outlets, circumscribed academic freedom, and maintained some restrictions on the ability of religious groups to meet and worship. The government refused to recognize independent human rights groups or permit them to function legally. In addition the government continued to prevent workers from forming independent unions and otherwise exercising their...rights.
Fidel Castro also did not deliver a better Cuba. It is a myth, one perpetuated by uneducated media and apologists for the Castro regime, like our Prime Minister.
Consider education for a moment. A study by Jorge Salazar-Carrillo and Andro Nodarse-Leon entitled “Cuba: From Economic Take-Off to Collapse Under Castro” pointed out that in 1954 Cuba spent 4.1% of its GDP on education, higher than the United States at the time. It had a higher literacy rate and a higher women participation rate compared to other Latin American countries. Cuba does not participate in any international metrics on education, including the international mathematics and science survey. It does not participate in the program of international student assessment, also called PISA. On health care, Cuba in 1957 had more doctors per 1,000 people than Norway, Sweden, and Great Britain. In the 1950s, Cuba had a longer life expectancy rate and the lowest infant mortality rate in Latin America.
These authors were comparing Cuba to other similar Latin American countries.
They also said pre-revolutionary Cuba had a GDP per capita of $2,363. That was middle of the pack at the time, compared to other Latin American countries. Post-revolutionary Cuba by 2008 when Fidel stepped down had a GDP per capita of barely $3,764, barely an improvement over every single other country in the region. Now Cuba is in the bottom one-third compared to other Latin American countries when it is compared to similar types of countries.
Cuban physicians still today are routinely sent overseas. Cuba gets hard currency in return for these Cuban physicians serving overseas. Cuba gets a cut of the doctors' salaries and then the doctors get paid in Cuban pesos, which are almost worthless.
We could blame the American embargo for the lack of improvements on social programs, but was communism not supposed to provide for self-sufficiency? I was born in a communist country. I do not remember fleeing the free education and free health care that was afforded there. I distinctly remember my parents leaving because of the political and religious oppression.
If communism works so splendidly, should Cuba not have developed vast resources with the help of the Soviet Union, which considered Cuba an ally in its overview, and its overlords, the Castros?
The Salazar-Carrillo and Nodarse-Leon report on Cuba dispelled that contrived myth that the Castros did anything other than impoverish Cubans while enriching themselves. There are now two million Cuban Americans, Cubans who fled mostly to Florida.
South Florida has become a vibrant community directly because of the terror that the Castros spread, that they levied against the Cubans. Tens of thousands who braved choppy seas, rickety rafts, and uncertain treatment by the U.S. coast guard were not fleeing free education or free health care. They were fleeing the terror being spread by the communist Castro regime of Cuba.
In a Human Rights Watch report in January 2016 it says, “The Cuban government continues to repress dissent and discourage public criticism. It now relies less on long-term prison sentences to punish its critics,” that is a bonus, “but short-term arbitrary arrests of human rights defenders, independent journalists, and others have increased dramatically in recent years. Other repressive tactics employed by the government include beatings, public acts of shaming, and the termination of employment.... Prisoners are forced to work 12-hour work days and punished if they do not meet production quotas, according to former political prisoners” who fled to western countries.
What I find most grating about the statement that the Prime Minister issued is when I compare Cuba to other countries. The only one I will be able to use is comparative statements by dictator Bashar al-Assad of Syria, who said that Cuba has “thus become a beacon for the liberation of the peoples of the South American countries and others around the world.” He said, “The name Fidel Castro will live forever in the minds of generations and remain an inspiration for all the peoples who aspire to achieve real independence and liberation from the yoke of colonialism and hegemony”.
When I have a hard time saying whether this statement was by Bashar al-Assad of Syria or the Canadian government, there is something deeply wrong. The member for Thornhill had a perfect example of what should have been done. A statement that emphasizes empowering the Cuban people, defending democracy, and promoting human rights and the rule of law is the right way to go. We must vote for this motion and retract that statement by the Prime Minister.