up until recently, canada's relations with cuba (especially during the trudeau and chretien years, but even under mulroney) haven't been well-characterized as being an american cheerleader. canada was actually trying to act as an intermediate, and no doubt did in ways we don't really know about. there was of course a lot of opposition to this from segments of the canadian right. there was a minor fiasco up here when castro flew in to act as a pallbearer for trudeau's funeral, with the then recently more aggressive canadian right using it as an opportunity to attack the then ruling liberals as being soft on communist dictators. relations between trudeau and reagan were famously strained due to this sort of thinking, not just with castro but with communism in general. there's a trudeau biography (i can't remember the name of it) that explains that reagan was convinced that trudeau was a communist sympathizer and didn't want to share intelligence with him. it's a sort of open secret that reagan pushed trudeau out of office for exactly this reason.

certainly, canada buckled to a lot of pressure. but, there was an active policy of internationalism and multipolarity in canadian foreign policy throughout the last quarter of the last century, to the point that it felt like it was a part of the canadian national identity. this certainly extended to cuba.

but things have changed here a whole over the last decade. it's not just the change of political leadership, but also the increasing power of canadian resource companies - both in africa and central america.

it's also widely understood in canada that our government is stuck supporting the drug war due to american pressure, not due to ideological agreement. chretien considered legalization of marijuana to be a legacy project. it's understood that it didn't happen because the americans wouldn't allow it. and it's an open secret that bush (or the reaganite bush advisers) pushed him out for similar reasons.

that's not to distract from the point. it's just not a fair characterization of canada between 1965 and 2005 to suggest that they were out to isolate cuba and support the drug war.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j1GSLoP76a4