Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  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.

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  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.

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  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.

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  Will you repeat it, please?

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  I didn't admit there were any; I said I align them as being similar. And they're your words, asking me if there were human rights violations. I don't think there are in Canada. I don't know, there probably are somewhere. However—

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  The only comment I'll make is that in 2004 I was on a Governor General's leadership conference in the Northwest Territories, and a group of 14 of us met with lots of aboriginal and first nations leaders in the Northwest Territories who have a lot of complaints. As a matter of fact, they didn't even want to.

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  There are no human rights concerns that I have from talking to workers and meeting with workers both in Cuba and workers that have come to Canada. The analogy I used was just to set the stage for that.

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  The comment I have to make on that is that in talking to the workers and forwarding issues up from the workplace around issues in Cuba, the workers themselves feel pretty empowered. That's the impression I get from them: they feel fairly empowered. When I look at it, I look at it in the sense of in Canada the unions protest against government decisions--we come to Parliament Hill, we try to influence governments on labour laws and other different things--whereas down there protest is more “pro” than “test”.

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  Thank you. I'm very happy to be here. I just want to make some points about Cuba and unions on this topic. I'll start out with the fact that Kingston is the only city in Canada that's twinned with a Cuban city, and that's Cienfuegos. That happened in November 2004, with an exchange of mayors and a group that went down from Kingston to Cuba to do that.