LETTER TO PRIME MINISTER CARNEY: Principled Canadian foreign policy requires voting ‘YES’ at the upcoming UN vote for the necessity to end the unlawful, life-threatening U.S. embargo against Cuba

Click here for a pdf version of the APG’s letter to the Prime Minister.

October 15, 2026

Dear Prime Minister Carney,

Like many in Canada and around the world, our coalition of 22 Canadian civil society organizations welcomed your inspiring call at the World Economic Forum in Davos that middle powers like Canada have the capacity to build a new order that encompasses Canadian values of respect for human rights, sustainable development, solidarity, sovereignty and territorial integrity of states.

Likewise, we commend Foreign Affairs Minister Anand's September statement at the UN General Assembly declaring Canada's strong commitment to the principles of the United Nations, human rights, international law and Article 1(2) of the UN Charter: the self-determination of peoples.

We urge Canada to uphold these values and commitments at the end of October by voting ‘YES’ to a resolution at the UN General Assembly calling for an end to the decades-long, escalating, rights-violating U.S. embargo against Cuba.

Canada's longstanding, principled relationship with Cuba has earned respect in Latin America and underscored to the region our independence from the United States. For 33 consecutive years, under both Liberal and Conservative governments, Canada has voted annually, alongside an overwhelmingly majority of UN member states, to support the end of the U.S. embargo against Cuba.

We cannot overemphasize the urgency of the situation, amid a staggering, preventable, worsening humanitarian crisis in Cuba that has been exacerbated by President Trump’s executive order threatening tariffs on countries that provide oil to Cuba, as well as additional sanctions with extraterritorial effect on private entities like traders, insurers, tourism or shipping companies, and financial institutions. Such measures violate the sovereignty of every nation that would trade with Cuba, including Canada.

In August, five respected UN human rights experts urged the international community to act swiftly to prevent a "silent Gaza" from unfolding in Cuba, notably condemning recent sanctions by the U.S. as “an attempt to alter the constitutional order of a sovereign State through threats and coercion, with devastating consequences for vital rights to food, health and other human rights of the Cuban people”. The experts conclude: “Measures that knowingly deprive a population of the means to survive strike at the most basic guarantees of the rights to life.”

“Devastating” is also the conclusion of the hard-hitting UN expert report delivered last month to the Human Rights Council. It emphasizes that the entire population of Cuba is impacted by the U.S. embargo but especially children, pregnant women, the aged, and persons with disabilities or chronic diseases requiring transplants or other once-accessible treatments that are no longer possible.

Indeed, we are alarmed by recent warnings from UN agencies in Cuba of “mounting risks of food insecurity and shortages of medicines and basic necessities, with repeated national grid collapses and prolonged blackouts disrupting health care services and causing critical shortages of medicines and cancer-treatment capacity”. This is cruel, intentional, collective punishment of the Cuban people.

In light of this ever more dire catastrophe, we urge Canada to respond to the call by UN Special Rapporteur Alena Douhan to the international community to “act in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations, the principles of territorial sovereignty and the right to self-determination, and with respect for the human rights of the Cuban population”. This is entirely in keeping with the values and commitments you have asserted so eloquently in international fora, as well as a long and proud history of independent Canadian foreign policy in the face of U.S. aggression against the sovereignty of Cuba.

In addition to the vitally important necessity of joining other middle powers at the UN General Assembly later this month to support the resolution calling for an end to the U.S. blockade against Cuba, we urge Canada to:

• Publicly oppose and work to stop threatened U.S. military intervention in Cuba.

• Speak out forcefully against unlawful U.S. coercive measures to withhold fuel and starve the Cuban people.

• Work determinedly with the UN and other countries, in ways that respect Cuban sovereignty, to get fuel and other life-sustaining supplies to Cuba.

• Increase Canadian government aid to Cuba to protect the rights of the most vulnerable.

• Enforce the Foreign Extraterritorial Measures Act to protect Canadian corporations that do business in Cuba against U.S. sanctions.

• Lift the Government of Canada’s advisory against non-essential travel to Cuba and expand opportunities for tourism, trade and cultural exchange.

We hope we can count on this principled action.

Sincerely,

Deanna Fasciani and Lisa Kowalchuk,

Co-chairs of the Americas Policy Group (APG)