A group of Cuban residents in Toronto, Canada, demonstrated this Saturday in the streets of the city to visualize the economic, political and social crisis that is being experienced on the Island.
“With the money that the regime collects from Canadian tourism, more patrols are being bought, more hotels are being invested, instead of in public health or food for Cubans,” explained Cuban Ernesto Pérez in a Facebook post in which He shared videos of the demonstration.
According to their testimony, protesters belonging to the SOSCuba group from Toronto gathered in the central square of Dundas Square to let Canadians know why tourist trips to the island are harmful to the Cuban people.
“We are campaigning so that Canadians know what is happening in Cuba and the impact that their tourist trips to Cuba have. We will be carrying out actions of this type in various parts of Toronto now that we are in the week of the election campaign,” Pérez added during his broadcast.
Canada, the second country that sends tourists to Cuba behind Spain, will hold legislative elections on September 20 and Cubans are taking advantage of the moment to pressure political groups, especially Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's executive, to visualize the crisis in Cuba and contribute to designing a foreign policy that prioritizes the freedom and rights of the people.
“If they admire the Cuban people so much, as they say, Canadians should not travel to a Cuba subjected to a dictatorship,” denounced over a loudspeaker one of the independent Cuban civil society activists gathered in the square.
“The Trudeau government must raise its voice for the rights of the Cuban people that are being systematically violated,” said another of the speakers in the plaza, one of the busiest in the city, located in the financial district of Toronto.
In mid-August, Cuban residents in Canada met with members of the Conservative Party to demand that Trudeau condemn and act against the Havana regime. The meeting took place on Canada's Parliament Hill, on the south bank of the Ottawa River, and opponents Pierre Marcel Poilievre and Leo Housakos participated.
A month earlier and prompted by the historic 11J protests in Cuba, the Canadian government, a traditional ally of Havana, alluded to “the violent repression of protests by the Cuban regime” and said that the people of the island “deserve democracy.” and freedom.” Previously, the prime minister had issued very tepid statements in which he did not condemn the repression on the island.
“We are deeply concerned by the violent repression of protests by the Cuban regime,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau later said at a news conference in Montreal. “We support the people of Cuba who want and deserve democracy, freedom and respect”, he added.
At the end of June, the airline Air Canada announced that flights to Cayo Coco and Varadero would resume flights starting in July, with two trips planned from Toronto and Montreal international airports.
At the end of August, the Canadian tour operators Hola Sun/Caribe Sol also announced the restart of its operations in Cuba in the midst of the worst moment of the crisis due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Hola Sun/Caribe Sol resumes tourist trips to the Island in collaboration with the Canadian airline Off We Go (OWG), a subsidiary of Nolinor Aviation based in Quebec and in operations since 1992, reported this Sunday on its website.
For its part, at the beginning of September the Canadian airline Sunwing announced that I would fly from Ottawa to different tourist destinations in Cuba, starting next November. The operations would include trips to four destinations in Cuba: Cayo Santa María, Varadero, Cayo Coco and Holguín.
In August, a couple of Canadian tourists who visited Cuba this summer said that His trip to the island became an odyssey when one of them tested positive for the coronavirus upon arriving in the Caribbean country.
The tourist couple, residents of Quebec, had been vaccinated against the coronavirus but, upon arriving in the country, in addition to presenting their negative test for COVID-19, they had to take a PCR test at the airport to comply with the protocols established by the Cuban State. From that moment on, his vacation became a nightmare of clinical tests, isolation and medical expenses.
For this reason, the Canadian tourist advised against traveling to Cuba in the current epidemiological circumstances that the country is experiencing and pointed out that she would not travel to another destination that requires confinements similar to those she had to experience in Cuba.
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