Evan Dyer · CBC News · Posted: Mar 22, 2026
Hotel operations and one of the world’s biggest open-pit mines could face expropriation and other claims
In Havana on Friday, Cuba’s deputy foreign minister, Carlos Fernández de Cossío Domínguez, argued that Canada should maintain the commercial relationship with Cuba that has made it the country’s largest foreign investor after Spain.
“Since 1972, it has maintained the largest flow of visitors to Cuba. It is an important relationship,” said de Cossío, who once served as Cuba’s ambassador in Ottawa.
“There are important trade relations. There is foreign investment…. Despite the fact that we do not have a coincidence in all the political and international positions, we have always known how to solve our problems, our differences, and work with them based on dialogue and based on mutual respect.”
But de Cossío’s hopes for more Canadian investment look unlikely to be realized, amid crippling power shortages and increasing difficulties collecting monies owed.
This week, Canada issued new advice for Canadian companies thinking of Cuban possibilities, warning of “payment risks” amid an “ongoing liquidity crisis.”
And the Canadian Commercial Corporation (CCC), the Crown corporation that helped many Canadian businesses enter the Cuban market, has stopped assisting and encouraging new entries.
“CCC’s Cuba program, delivered in partnership with Export Development Canada, ended as of Jan. 1, 2026,” said spokesperson Liane Cerminara. “The Cuba program concluded due to a convergence of rising financial risk and deteriorating economic conditions.”
Cuba grinds to a halt
The consequences of Cuba’s grave energy crisis can be seen in every area of the Cuban economy.
“Fuel is needed for everything, from energy for hospitals, for homes, for education, for industry, for the production of food, for agriculture, for transportation, for medical care, for the livelihoods of people,” de Cossío said.
He blamed those problems squarely on the U.S. fuel blockade.
The blackouts, he said, are “not a result of Cuban inefficiency, not as the result of Cuba mismanagement of the electrical grid, but because the United States is depriving Cuba of fuel.”
Many Cuban dissidents would argue that the country’s collapse was very much a result of mismanagement, and of ideology.
But the reality is that the fuel blockade has pushed a tottering economy over the edge, and while the main victims are the Cuban people, Canadian companies are taking a beating, too. And there could be even larger losses down the road.
For decades, Canadian governments made it a point of pride to disregard U.S. sanctions on Cuba, including the Helms-Burton Act of 1996.
In 2017, Honda Canada Finance, Inc. found itself in the sights of the U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control for leasing cars to the Cuban Embassy in Ottawa.
The company was lucky enough to have a U.S. parent company — the American Honda Finance Corporation — to pay the $87,255 US fine. Canadian law would have made it illegal to pay, because since 1992, Canada has enforced the Foreign Extraterritorial Measures (United States) Order, banning compliance with the U.S. embargo.
A Global Affairs Canada spokesperson told CBC News at the time that U.S. sanctions “interfere with the right of Canadian companies to conduct their business in a manner consistent with international trade practice and the laws of Canada.”
Two years later, the Trump administration chose to activate Title III and Title IV of the Helms-Burton Act, which had been in abeyance for two decades, increasing the risk to Canadian companies operating in Cuba.
Canada protested vigorously.
“I have been in contact with Canadian businesses to reaffirm we will fully defend the interests of Canadians conducting legitimate trade and investment with Cuba,” said Chrystia Freeland, who was foreign affairs minister at the time.
A Cuban-Canadian hotel boom and bust
Many Canadian companies have found lucrative opportunities in Cuba.
Over the course of its Cuba program, Cerminara said, “CCC facilitated the sales of goods and services from Canadian suppliers for Cuba’s revenue-generating sectors of agriculture and tourism at a total value of $1.8 billion since 1991.”
Particularly in the past 15 years, companies such as Sunwing invested heavily in Cuban tourism, opening new hotels such as the Mystique Casa Perla in Varadero. Sunwing subsidiary Blue Diamond Resorts, now Royalton, went from fewer than 400 hotel rooms on the island in 2010 to nearly 9,000 by the time of the pandemic.
Many Canadian investors partnered with the Gaviota chain, which belongs to the holding company run by the Cuban military, GAESA, that increasingly dominates the Cuban economy.
GAESA had ambitious plans to turn the island into a tourism superpower, with 103,000 rooms planned by 2030. And Sunwing has continued to invest in Cuba even after the pandemic, opening two more hotels last year.
But the tourists have not returned as expected following the pandemic, and Cuban tourism now finds itself in crisis, says Cuban American researcher and human rights activist Maria Werlau.
“The operating environment is near collapse. In the hotels, there’s shortages of food, there’s no electricity, no water, poor service, poor maintenance. Tourism is down by a lot. The hotels are empty.”
In addition, airlines have recently cancelled flights to the island over concerns about fuel shortages.
Sunwing and Royalton did not respond to requests for comment from CBC News. Nor did the Cuba Tourist Board.
Hundreds of millions owed to mining company
The biggest Canadian operation in Cuba is the Moa nickel and cobalt mine, a joint venture between the Cuban government and Toronto-based Sherritt International. Ore from Moa, one of the largest open-pit mines in the world, is refined at another jointly run facility in Fort Saskatchewan, Alta.When the Cuban government started failing to make payments to Sherritt, it negotiated a repayment plan.
But the Cubans quickly started to fall behind. Sherritt reported in its second-quarter financial statement last year that the debt stood at $344 million US.
Werlau said the country has been “technically bankrupt” since the 1980s. But she says the government now has lost access to hard currency, as its operating environment has “pretty much collapsed.”
Source: CBC News
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