CANADA
The Atlanta attacks were not just racist and misogynist, they painfully reflect the society 

we live in

Jamie Chai Yun Liew, 

Associate Professor,

 Faculty of Law, 

L’Université d’Ottawa/University of Ottawa 

3/19/2021

I am heartbroken but I’m not surprised

.

© (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes) Those that were killed were targeted not only because of their race and gender but also their perceived work and immigration status.

The targeted killing of eight women in Atlanta, six of them Asian, is a brutal result of decades-long exclusion and oppression, legitimized in law and colonial reverberations, that allow a white-dominated settler society to thrive, justifying differential treatment of racialized migrants.

Let’s unpack this a bit

Many blame former U.S. president Donald Trump for calling COVID-19 the “Asian flu,” “Kung Flu” and “China Virus,” among other terms, for this increase in violent attacks and harassment. And while it’s certainly contributed, these violent attacks, harassment and hate expressed against people of Asian descent did not begin with Trump or the pandemic.

Read more: Anti-Asian racism during coronavirus: How the language of disease produces hate and violence

Here is where the toolkit built by critical race and feminist theorists can help us understand that the tragic deaths of these women are not new, not isolated, but represent racist, misogynist violence and are reflective of the society we live in.

Those who were killed were targeted not only because of their race and gender but also because of their perceived work and immigration status.

In other words, they were targeted because of their intersectional identities.

© (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer) The New York Police Department Community Affairs Rapid Response Unit hands out flyers with information on how to report hate crimes to residents.

The intersectionality of identities

Women were killed. It is undeniable that violence against women is one of the leading causes of death of women around the world. The Canadian Femicide Observatory recently confirmed that 160 women and girls were killed by violence in Canada in 2020, with 90 per cent of the incidents involving a male accused.

Six of the eight women in Atlanta were Asian. We’ve seen a significant increase in violence against Asians during the pandemic. In the United States, according to Stop AAPI Hate, 3,800 incidents were reported during the pandemic, with 68 per cent of them being reported by women.

This is a 150 per cent increase in the number of hate incidents against Asians — and Canada is not immune. Per capita, Canada has a greater number of incidents reported than the United States. According to Fight COVID Racism, there have been 928 incidents of violence due to discrimination against Asians since the pandemic began.
Perceived immigration and citizenship status

Tied to this is the perceived immigration or citizenship status of Asians in North America. Immigration status has long been used as a way to separate and exclude racialized people in the post-colonial project of preserving a white-dominated settler society.

The 1923 Chinese Exclusion Act was designed to keep racialized persons from settling in Canada. It was also designed to keep the “Yellow Peril” out, and for 24 years provided a mechanism to conduct health examinations based on misunderstandings that such persons were contagions.

This early identification of “foreigners with disease” has framed our current discourse.

While history tells us how North Americans may have come to fear Asian people and how Asians have been and still are perceived as vectors of disease, our current laws continue to justify differential treatment of racialized migrants.
Migrant workers

Migrant essential workers in agriculture, caregiving, health care, meat processing and other sectors come to Canada with temporary residence status without their families. Because of their precarious immigration status, they are subject to abuse, long working hours and the withholding of pay, all with little legal protection or recourse.

During the pandemic, they have been blamed for COVID-19 outbreaks despite risking their lives to care for our young and sick and to put food on our tables. These migrant workers are predominantly racialized and are given different treatment than other “higher” skilled workers in industries where permanent residence and family reunification are available.

© (AP Photo/Mike Stewart) A makeshift memorial is captured on March 17, 2021, outside a business where multiple fatal shootings occurred.

Criminalized and precarious

Finally, we should not ignore the perception that the women killed are being seen as sex workers. Although lawmakers in Atlanta say there is no evidence that those killed were sex workers, the shooter — and in turn, some media outlets — perceive them to be. Sex work has long been viewed, in North America, as immoral, unclean and dangerous, and laws were enacted to criminalize it.

In Canada, as the Supreme Court recognized the harms and unconstitutionality of laws that criminalize sex workers and their workplaces, the federal government introduced new laws purported to target women assumed to be exploited. Current policy and legal approaches focus on police and law enforcement to conduct raids and investigation of sex work establishments in the name of anti-trafficking — subjecting sex workers to surveillance, harassment, detention and deportation.

Read more: Canada’s laws designed to deter prostitution, not keep sex workers safe

Migrant sex workers are therefore not only criminalized, but subject to precarious immigration status because sex work is not recognized as work that one could obtain a work permit for. It can also be identified as a reason to render someone inadmissible to Canada on criminal grounds.

Weave this in with the fetishization of Asian women and how they are viewed as disposable objects and the normative message our laws send. All this allows people to think it is OK to treat migrant sex workers violently and inhumanely.

More than anti-Asian hate

In trying to make sense of what happened, it’s important to see the tragedy as more than just violence against women and anti-Asian hate.

If you think this is confined to the U.S., think again. One need only look at our farms, health-care facilities, places of worship, borders and prisons to see how racialized people suffer because of their perceived immigration status, religion, race, gender and work.

Don’t let the model minority myth that Asians are the “desirable … non-threatening person of colour” be used to hide the systemic racism that is experienced by Asians and other marginalized people in our community.

If you are feeling powerless, there is something you can do. Support grassroots, community-led organizations like SWANVancouver, Butterfly: Asian and migrant sex workers network, Asian Canadian Women’s Alliance and the Migrant Workers Alliance for Change.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Jamie Chai Yun Liew. does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment

SHOCKING BUT TRUE

Canadians...want no role for Royal Family in Canada: poll
Josh K. Elliott 

A majority of Canadians believe Meghan Markle was treated unfairly by the Royal Family because of her race, and a greater majority would prefer it if the monarchy had no formal role in Canada going forward, a new Ipsos poll suggests.

Ipsos conducted the poll exclusively for Global News after Oprah Winfrey’s explosive interview with Prince Harry and Meghan Markle earlier this month.

Read more: Six stand-out moments from the jaw-dropping 'Oprah with Meghan and Harry' interview

The couple spoke about their struggles with the “constant barrage” of “toxic” British media, the racism that Markle faced and the lack of support they received from the Royal Family. Markle also accused the Royal Family of refusing to provide mental help when she had suicidal thoughts, and alleged that someone in the family raised questions about her then-unborn child’s skin colour.

Harry later told Winfrey that Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip were not part of those conversations about skin colour.

Fifty-eight per cent of Canadians agreed that the Royal Family treated Markle unfairly because of her race, according to the poll. Women and people between the ages of 18 and 34 were more likely to agree, but a majority of respondents supported the notion across every demographic. Black respondents were most likely to support the notion at 98 per cent.

Eight in 10 people said that Harry and Markle made the right decision to leave the Royal Family last year, according to the poll.

Ipsos also saw an uptick in support for ending the Royal Family's formal role in Canada, continuing a trend of rising support for that notion since 2016.

Two in three Canadians, or 66 per cent of respondents, said the Queen and the royals should not have any formal role in Canadian society, as they are "simply celebrities and nothing more." That's up two per cent over last year and six per cent since 2016, Ipsos says.

Roughly six in 10 people said the relationship between Canada and the monarchy should end when the Queen dies, although only about half of Canadians (53 per cent) supported the idea of a referendum on the monarchy, according to the poll. Nearly eight in 10 Canadians felt the Queen has done a good job in her role.

The Queen is represented at the federal level by the Governor General, and at the provincial level by the lieutenant governors. The Governor General role is currently vacant after the departure of Julie Payette, who resigned amid allegations of workplace bullying last month.

The Canadian poll results are markedly different from those seen in the United Kingdom after the Winfrey interview, which sparked a firestorm of anger among British pundits at the time.

Read more: Piers Morgan doubles down on Meghan Markle attacks after ‘Good Morning Britain’ exit

A YouGov poll found that 48 per cent of 1,664 respondents in the U.K. had a negative view of Harry, while only three in 10 felt positive about Markle. It was the first time that Harry's popularity has ever plunged below the 50 per cent mark.

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex left the U.K. in early 2020 and initially landed in British Columbia before securing a more permanent home in California.

Video: Unaired ‘Oprah with Meghan and Harry’ clips shed more light on royal rift

The couple's interview with Winfrey was their first in-depth public conversation since the move, and their allegations sparked a rare response from the family.

The royals said they were “saddened” by the couple's allegations and found the claims about racism “concerning,” but also hinted at a difference in “recollection.”

“The issues raised, particularly that of race, are concerning,” they said in the statement, which was issued on behalf of Queen Elizabeth II. “While some recollection may vary, they are taken very seriously and will be addressed by the family privately.”

Harry and Markle are expecting a second child in the coming months.

—

Exclusive Global News Ipsos polls are protected by copyright. The information and/or data may only be rebroadcast or republished with full and proper credit and attribution to “Global News Ipsos.” This poll was conducted between March 11 and March 12, 2021, with a sample of 1,000 Canadians aged 18+ interviewed online. The precision of Ipsos online polls is measured using a credibility interval. This poll is accurate to within ± 3.5 percentage points, 19 times out of 20, had all Canadians aged 18+ been polled.

ALBERTA

Wikiwell website shows oil and gas well history

GIVE OIL WORKERS RECLAMATION JOBS

A website providing information about oil and gas wells throughout North America now has more Alberta wells, allowing landowners to check the history and status of wells in and around their properties.

WellWiki.org was created by Joel Gehman, a professor of strategy, entrepreneurship and management at the University of Alberta School of Business.

The project started when Gehman was working on his PhD at Pennsylvania State University and became interested in the oil and gas industry, then taking off there with the advent of fracking. He started to compile data on wells and continued this focus after moving to the University of Alberta in 2012.

As part of a grant application, Gehman proposed to create a website allowing members of the public to access the information he worked to compile. He won the grant and spent parts of 2013 and 2014 building a prototype of the site. Since then, he has worked to expand the site and increase its coverage.

WellWiki.org now includes over 4.3 million wells drilled by almost 136,000 producers. By his estimates, there are 5.8 million wells in North America. “So about a million and a half to go,” he said.

Each U.S. state and Canadian province also has its own rules and regulations for the oil and gas industry, influencing how information is categorized, stored and accessed. “There’s a whole wide variety of ways of how we find the data,” said Gehman.

The more recent wells are, the more likely they are in the database. Some of the oldest wells, drilled before regulations or regulators, might not be included.

The record for each well contains its unique well identifier (UWI) number, operator, legal land location and license status, among other information. Each well has a unique page, providing a map and details of its history and production output.

With support by the Alberta Real Estate Foundation, Gehman was able to expand the site’s coverage in Alberta. This was done to make oil and gas well data more accessible to landowners, municipalities and other stakeholders across Alberta.

Alberta features 619,503 wells in the database drilled by 18,015 producers.

“That’s every well the regulator knows exists,” said Gehman. “But there was some early activity back at the start of the early 1900s, so it’s very possible there are some wells that never got recorded.”

Wheatland County, Alberta, contains 18,110 wells in the dataset.

 

The top three producers in the county account for about 86 per cent of its wells. These include Lynx Energy ULC (8,014 wells or about 44 per cent), Torxen Energy Ltd. (4,400 wells or about 24 per cent) and Ember Resources Inc. (3,256 wells or about 18 per cent).

The next most prominent producers are Canadian Natural Resources (702 wells), Ovintiv Canada ULC (412 wells), Persist Oil and Gas Inc. (251 wells) and Cenovus Energy Inc. (233 wells). A total of 86 other producers have wells in Wheatland County, all with fewer than 100 wells.

Of Wheatland’s 18,110 wells, about 12 per cent (2,111) have suspended licenses and about five per cent (894) are abandoned. A total of 975 wells have received reclamation certification.

Sean Feagan, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, Strathmore Times

YES HE SAID THAT

United Nurses of Alberta calls finance minister hypocritical in contract talks

3/19/2021

EDMONTON — The union representing registered nurses in Alberta says it's "grossly insulting" and hypocritical for Finance Minister Travis Toews to accuse them of putting their needs first during the COVID-19 pandemic.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

“Normally when we’re in negotiations it’s (the) ministers of health that pipe up,” David Harrigan, director of labour relations for the United Nurses of Alberta, said in an interview Friday.

"This round (of bargaining) is the first time that the minister of finance continues to throw out these news releases grossly insulting the UNA."

Harrigan questioned why the province is having contract talks with other public sector unions during the pandemic but wants the UNA to put its deal on pause.

"Mr. Toews had no problem at all with the government insisting on negotiating with (the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees). I’ve never seen such hypocrisy," he said.

During the pandemic, the government has also continued negotiations on a new agreement covering pay and working conditions with physicians. A tentative deal was recently announced by Health Minister Tyler Shandro and Dr. Paul Boucher, the head of the Alberta Medical Association.

The rank and file members of the AMA are now voting on whether to ratify that agreement.

The last four-year collective agreement with Alberta Health Services and the United Nurses of Alberta expired almost a year ago.

The UNA says it represents more than 30,000 registered nurses, registered psychiatric nurses and other workers in the province.

The two sides began negotiating a new deal in 2019, but then mutually agreed twice to suspend contract talks to the end of this month in order to focus on the pandemic.

This week, the UNA formally notified Alberta Health Services it wants to get back to bargaining and seeks meeting times in April or May.

Harrigan said the government is proceeding with other health initiatives, such as reducing surgical wait times, and that it’s time to get back to the table to sort out the contract and determine how nurses will fit into those changes.

He said no Albertan will suffer because of it.

"The AHS negotiator is not out there dealing with COVID. Alberta Health Services hires people to negotiate their collective agreements, and they hire professional negotiators. They don't hire COVID health care professionals."

Toews disagrees. In a news release issued Thursday, he said he was "very disappointed" with the UNA decision.

"Right now, Alberta’s government is focused on what matters most – the rollout of our vaccination program and continued response to the pandemic," wrote Toews.

"We’re starting to make headway in this battle with COVID-19, and I’m hopeful that other unions at AHS do not follow the lead of UNA, and will agree to delay negotiations that puts the health of Albertans first."

Harrigan said he suspects the real reason the province does not want to return to the bargaining table is that it would have to disclose its plan to proceed with a layoff program revealed in late 2019.

That plan would see 500 nursing positions eliminated over three years, a figure the UNA says is equivalent to more than 700 employees losing their jobs once job-sharing is factored in.

Premier Jason Kenney’s United Conservative government has said Alberta nurses are better compensated than those in comparable jurisdictions and that carefully targeted reductions and outsourcing are needed to keep the health system viable.

The layoff plan was put on hiatus in March 2020, when Shandro and Toews announced there would be no nurses let go during the pandemic.

Harrigan said the plan is dormant but not extinct.

"They want to keep that hidden," said Harrigan.

"They don’t want to admit to the public that as soon as this pandemic is over, there's going to be huge layoffs."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 19, 2021.

Dean Bennett, The Canadian Press

ALBERTA

New report shows child care fees in Edmonton and Calgary remain high, enrolment dips due to COVID-19

SO LET'S CUT THE $25 A DAY CHILD SUPPORT PROGRAM

Anna Junker 

EDMONTON JOURNAL

3/19/2021

© Provided by Edmonton Journal A new report shows child care fees remain high in Edmonton and Calgary and enrolment has dropped due to COVID.

A new report shows child care fees in Alberta remain high while enrolment dropped during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The new study by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA), titled Sounding the Alarm: COVID-19’s impact on Canada’s precarious child care sector, involved more than 11,000 phone calls to child care centres, licensed family child care providers and in provinces using an agency-based family child care model.

The fees included in the survey are for children aged five and under in centres of family-based, full-time, regulated child care.

According to senior economist and the report’s co-author David Macdonald, child care centres offering lower fees because of provincial funding were able to hold their own during the pandemic.

“Our survey shows that cities with higher fees saw bigger drops in enrolment,” Macdonald said in a news release. “It’s clear that relying on exorbitant parent fees to fund services that should be part of the social infrastructure is what got us into this mess in the first place. Canada’s economic recovery is at risk without more, and different, support.”

According to the report, in Edmonton, the median monthly child care fee for pre-school aged children was $925 while the median monthly fees for infants was $1,050. For toddlers it was $950.

In Calgary, those fees were $1,145 for pre-school aged children, $1,300 for infants, and $1,250 for toddlers.

Edmonton was among the top 10 cities — coming in at eighth place — that saw the largest enrolment drop. Between February and September 2020, child care enrolment decreased in the city by 43 per cent. In Calgary, it decreased by 31 per cent.

The report states the percentage decline does not show the absolute number change. However, in Edmonton, there was more than 10,000 fewer children in child care in the fall of 2020 than before the pandemic and nearly 7,000 fewer in Calgary.

Six per cent of child care centres in Edmonton reported an increase in fees due to COVID-19 pressure. Edmonton also saw a six per cent increase in pre-school aged fees in 2020 compared to 2019.

The study notes one factor that could influence the fee change is the province halting the $25-a-day child care program in 22 of 122 centres in June 2020.

“Another factor was that subsidy rates for lower-income families increased in August 2020 and experience shows that unless parent fees are controlled, providers often raise fees when subsidy rates are increased,” the report states.

“It’s important to note that this survey was conducted prior to the full end of the province’s $25-a-day project on March 31, 2021. It is expected that the impact of the remaining 100 centres losing their operational support will further increase Alberta’s median fees in 2021.”

The survey took place between Sept. 22 and Nov. 13, 2020 — after the first wave of the pandemic — and completed shortly before the second wave. The data represents a sample of 53 per cent of regulated full-time centre-based and regulated family child care in Canada.

CANADA
The coronavirus pandemic provides an opportunity to address homelessness

Timothy Martin, 

Doctoral Student, 

Faculty of Education, 

York University, Canada 

 

3/18/2021

As emergency shelters and encampments emerge in cities across North America, the public has been confronted with a more visible homeless population as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Unfortunately, this has led to several crusades aimed to — 

once again — hide this population from view.

© THE CANADIAN PRESS/Graham Hughes A small homeless camp is shown outside a department store in Montréal, Que., on Jan. 23, 2021, as the COVID-19 pandemic continues.

I research public responses to homelessness, and I believe that we can do better. Through education and dialogue, we can begin to recognize that we all want the same thing: the end of homelessness, safer neighbourhoods and adequate housing for all.

With several years of experience involved in coalition work alongside Ontario’s street-involved population, my doctoral research examines processes of mourning as ways to mobilize public understanding and togetherness.

Homelessness need not be viewed as an inevitable part of the fabric of North American society. It was not always omnipresent, and need not continue to be. It has only really become pervasive, and increasing since the 1980s in Canada. Research has argued that it is preventable.

Policies produce homelessness

Today’s housing crisis is a result of particular policies that are neither inevitable nor intractable. Yet, perhaps most unfortunately, the collective response has too often included blaming, criminalizing and stigmatizing people experiencing homelessness.

No longer can we covertly warehouse working-class people experiencing any mixture of bad luck, addictions, mental health challenges and trauma produced by historical oppressions that are difficult to define.

The spread of COVID-19 through the shelter system is well-documented, though it took a lawsuit for the City of Toronto to take action. And still, several Canadian cities threaten the evictions of the most vulnerable from encampments.

Read more: Cities must end homeless camp evictions during the coronavirus pandemic

Various communities made up of outreach workers, nurses and artists — such as the Encampment Support Network in Toronto — meet the material needs that city governments refuse to address. Meanwhile, “dehoused” citizens are shipped off to holding cells in hotels, shelters, community centres and empty apartment buildings, where many already struggling with mental illness or drug addictions are isolated and separated from essential harm reduction services. The results have been disastrous.

© THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jonathan Hayward This homeless camp at Strathcona Park in Vancouver, B.C., developed after city officials shut down the homeless encampment at Oppenheimer Park in late 2020 in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.

 BECAUSE POOR PEOPLE SHOULD NOT RESIDE FOR FREE IT UPSETS THE NEIGHBOURS WHO HAVE TO PAY RENT

Hope in coalitions

What is now emerging is the way in which certain affluent communities have veered toward age-old practices of NIMBYism, fear-mongering and unequal policing. Of course, this is a complex issue.

In a talk she gave at the West Coast Women’s Festival in 1981, social justice activist Bernice Johnson Reagon declared: “We’ve pretty much come to the end of a time when you can have a space that is ‘yours only’ — just for the people you want to be there.” Reagon, a lifelong civil rights activist and feminist, wrote and spoke about the desperate need to engage in coalition work, reminding her audience that coalition work “is not work done in your home. Coalition work has to be done in the streets.”

Medical sociologist Arthur Frank suggests a conceptual persona he calls the dialogical stoic that combines the stoicism of Marcus Aurelius with the dialogical responsibilities adhered to by the Russian philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin. Stoicism is that ability each of us has to choose the best option amid what is sometimes a panoply of difficult circumstances. Frank explains the steadfast commitment to dialogue as a discovery of the suffering of the other, while existing “on the boundary with others.” Frank emphasizes, importantly, Bakhtin’s claim that people are unfinalizable — thus, there is no “last word.” There is no “these types of people.”

Collisions open up opportunities for coalitions. Will we seek to discover the other — their stories, their pain, their gifts — as, like always, we have the choice to do so? Or will we band together with those only like us? Will we stay home or take to the streets?
‘Feel the strain’

There has been some thoughtful writing about the teachable moments offered by the pandemic. Students returning to schools certainly have much to digest and teachers have a great deal of material to draw from as they resume in-person classes.

But what if we began to consider the teachable moments offered to all of us, even as these opportunities present themselves in public spaces? Cultural critic Henry Giroux describes this as public pedagogy, arguing that classroom learning needs to spill out into “social movements in the streets.”

These are certainly uncomfortable moments. But, as Reagon reminds us: “If you feel the strain, you may be doing some good work.”

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. 

Read the original article.

Timothy Martin does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

CANADA

‘Everyone is at risk’: Migrants and undocumented workers need the COVID-19 vaccine too

Krista Hessey  

GLOBAL TV SPECIAL REPORT

 5 hrs ago  LONG READ 

Lily has risked her life working on the frontlines in one of the most dangerous settings for COVID-19 deaths in the country: long-term care homes.

© Provided by Global News "It's a trap." Lily came here legally, and has been trying to meet the requirements to gain permanent status for seven years. Now she's undocumented and has to start all over.

She says that she doesn’t think of it as dangerous and that she loves the work that she does. She actually transitioned from one-on-one care to long-term care during the coronavirus pandemic so she could help more people.

“Some of them think that once you reach a certain age, you don’t have (a reason to live),” Lily told Global News. “But for me, I always try to give them that — make sure they know that it’s not the end, being in a home.”

During the pandemic, essential workers like Lily are being called heroes. But despite caring for people on the frontlines of this health crisis, Lily herself doesn’t have access to healthcare.

She’s undocumented. We have changed her name to protect her identity as she fears deportation.

“You walk around in fear thinking, ‘Oh, today's the day.’ You really have to try to put that behind you and get up, go to work, function,” she says. “It's something that plays on your mind every single day — that you could be found out and lose everything you're trying to get here.”

Because she works in long-term care in Toronto, one of the cities hardest hit by COVID-19, she should have been among some of the first people to receive the vaccine. To arrange shots, her employer sent out an email in January, asking staff for their provincial health card numbers — something she doesn’t have.

So she put it off, forced to make excuses for why she won’t be getting the shot alongside all of her colleagues. She says she knows she would be fired if her employer found out she has no status.

“Then what will be your position? You have no money. You have to live here, yet you can pay bills,” she says, exasperated by the thought of once again being put in that situation.

“I don't want to take that chance.”

Despite assurances from federal and provincial governments that the vaccine will be available to everyone, regardless of immigration status, the reality on the ground is quite different.

There is fear and confusion. Advocates say the way provinces are approaching vaccination excludes and marginalizes migrant workers and undocumented people, despite those communities being some of the most at-risk.

The Migrant Rights Network, the country's largest network of migrant-led groups, along with 270 other organizations, is calling on federal and provincial governments to ensure people have safe and dignified access to the vaccine, regardless of status.

The Migrant Rights Network says that across the country, it is already seeing people being denied the vaccine, according to Karen Cocq, an organizer for the network. Among the list of the organization’s demands are that the vaccine must be free, not require a health card or the collection of any identification or addresses, or information about immigration status.

READ MORE: Dalhousie University to document impact of COVID-19 on temporary foreign workers

The network is also asking for a guarantee that information collected will not be shared with immigration enforcement or police.

“Unless those concrete measures are taken to ensure that everyone has access in practice, the policy won't matter,” Cocq says.

Video: Advocates say migrants and undocumented people are being denied access to vaccine

Global News reached out to the ministries of health in Ontario, British Columbia and Quebec — provinces that have large numbers of migrants and undocumented people — to see what information someone must give in order to receive the vaccine.

All three provinces say that the vaccine will be free and that a health card will not be required to get it, though a card is asked for at almost every stage from making the appointment to showing up at the clinic for the shot.

When asked what information will be collected, all provinces required a full legal name, address or postal code, date of birth, and contact information.

In Ontario, if you do not have a health card you must bring “another form of a government issued-photo ID, such as a driver’s licence, passport, Status Card or other provincial health cards,” something undocumented people likely don’t have.

“That level of information would keep an undocumented person away,” says Dr. Paul Caulford, director of the Canadian Centre for Refugee and Immigrant Healthcare. He has been providing health care to migrants and undocumented people for more than two decades.

Although provinces have laws in place to protect health information, for undocumented workers, it's not enough; the fear that information is being turned over to border services and of their possible deportation is too great.
Failed policies

When the coronavirus spread to Canada, Caulford says he knew it would be devastating to the population he treats.

In March 2020, he says six people with symptoms of COVID-19 showed up at the centre in Scarborough. He sent them to the hospital for treatment, but he says they were all turned away after they asked to pay for care but couldn't.

Outraged by this, he says he started organizing with other advocacy groups to call on the federal and provincial governments to expand coverage to uninsured people.


“We posed the question to them: if you don't treat everyone in your community and it's a pandemic, you treat no one. Everyone is at risk.”

It worked. In March 2020, Ontario and a few other provinces temporarily expanded health insurance coverage to uninsured people for COVID-related treatment. Ontario even went a step further and provided access to the full health system. It was a win, but celebrations did not last long.

Caulford and other physicians say it took hospitals a long time to implement the new policy. For months, people without coverage were being turned away or asked to pay for care.

“We had to advocate and phone (the hospitals),” Caulford says. “(The provincial government) didn't really blast on the loudspeakers that it was happening.”

“There was a policy announcement without a plan for implementation,” adds Dr. Dan Raza, chair of Canadian Doctors for Medicare and a family doctor at St. Michael's Hospital. “We absolutely cannot make that same mistake again.”
They are on the frontlines

Let’s take a moment to look at the scale of the problem.

More than 1.6 million people in Canada are migrants, refugees, or undocumented, according to the Migrant Rights Network. That’s one in every 23 people.

They come here through Canada’s various temporary foreign worker programs, via study permits or without documentation at all. They work in various frontline industries, such as health care, delivery, cleaning, construction, farming, and warehousing.

“This isn't something that's in the cracks, in the margins, in the shadows. This is a core part of our economy,” says Fay Faraday, a labour and human rights lawyer and an assistant professor at Osgoode Law School.

“There are significant sectors in our economy that would grind to a halt and businesses that would shut down without undocumented labour.”

The pandemic has brought to light the importance of essential workers, whose often low-paid, precarious work has kept the country functioning. While these people have received thanks and praise, for those with temporary status or no status at all, the last year has been devastating.

Like many Canadians, migrants and undocumented people have lost their jobs during this crisis but unlike Canadians, they cannot access emergency financial aid.

Most temporary workers are here on what’s called an employer-specific work permit, meaning they can only work for one employer and only do the job assigned on the permit. If they lose their jobs, they lose their income, health care coverage, and can't legally work anywhere else until they find a new employer willing to submit an application for a new work permit.

READ MORE: Advocates call for COVID-19 vaccination access for migrant and undocumented workers

That process of finding a new job and getting a work permit can take anywhere from nine months to more than a year in normal times, explains Faraday, and now the pandemic has made that take even longer.

With many industries shuttered by the pandemic, finding an employer who is willing to do the necessary paperwork can be tough and government processing times have been delayed, meaning people are waiting longer for the benefits that come along with the permit, like health coverage.

In order to pay bills and make ends meet, people are often forced to take work in the meantime which results in them losing their status if the government finds out.

“So there is a growing number of people who are in very precarious circumstances and have lost status for reasons that are completely beyond their control,” Faraday says.

Video: How to provide migrants and undocumented people safe access to the vaccine

The federal government says it knows that people are struggling due to job losses and service delays, but claims it has put policies in place to get migrants back to work, like extending windows of time for people to reapply for status and letting people work while permits are being processed.

For people in Canada without documentation at all, not having access to health care during a global health crisis has been beyond challenging.

Laura normally works as a residential cleaner but she lost her job because of the pandemic. She lives in Vancouver with her husband and their two children. We are not identifying her because she fears she could be deported.

Laura says the last year has been tough on her family. On top of struggling to pay rent, she has been terrified to get sick.

“It's really scary for us to get the virus because we say, are we allowed to go to the hospital?” she says.

Now with the vaccine available, Laura says she wants to get it but is nervous to go to a clinic.

“I won't feel comfortable giving my personal information,” she says. “I don't know what they will do with it.”

There are past examples of hospitals providing information to border services. Six years ago, a Vancouver health agency reportedly referred information about patients to the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA), though since then the practice has largely stopped.

Video: Undocumented worker speaks out about barriers to access COVID-19 vaccines

This fear is deeply ingrained in these communities and the government isn’t doing any messaging to combat it, Caulford says.

“All the government needs to do is put out an announcement through the radio that if you happen to be undocumented, come to the vaccine centre, you're safe. No data will be collected that will harm you,” he says.

He says he recently had a patient who almost went blind in one eye because he didn’t want to go to a hospital.

“That's how frightened they are of accessing health care.”

Caulford started the Canadian Centre for Refugee and Immigrant Healthcare, a volunteer clinic in Scarborough, with some colleagues after witnessing an undocumented teenager almost die after being denied care in 1999.

"We'd hoped we'd be out of business in one year after we told everybody what we found in 1999 and we're here 23 years later and it's worse," he says.

He's now on a mission to get vaccines to the centre's patients. For weeks, he has been wading through layers of bureaucracy in order to set up the centre's own pop-up vaccine clinic. He's hopeful to have it up and running soon.

"There will be phone calls to thousands of people to say, come in, and give them a heads up and address the vaccine hesitancy. But we're not going to collect your information. And they've come to trust this place," he says.

It’s important work, but the clinic is small and he says resources are limited. He’s frustrated by the lack of action from the federal government and says, "we're here because of bad policy."

"After all these years, they've still continued to let these people fend for themselves and be lost," Caulford says. "It's a form of apartheid health care because it's a highly racialized population. Ninety-five per cent of our patients are persons of colour and visible minorities."

After more than 20 years of pleading with the government, he says if this crisis does not bring awareness to the limitations of Canada's health care system, he doesn't know what will.

"Every morning, I wake up being grateful I'm in Canada, but often every night, I go to bed thinking about where we've let human beings in far less fortunate circumstances than ours down."

For Laura, getting the vaccine would mean she would be able to return to work and better support their two children during this crisis.

“It's necessary for everybody,” she says. “I don't want to be out of that just because of my status.”
Government response

Last summer, after three migrant farm workers from Mexico died from COVID-19, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau acknowledged the conditions that have left migrants and undocumented workers vulnerable to the virus.

“We know there are many issues, from living conditions to the fact that temporary foreign workers are tied individually to companies or employers, to various challenges around labour standards,” he said last June. “We can even look at things like pathways towards citizenship, which would give people more rights.”

Cocq from the Migrant Rights Network says it’s telling that the government recognizes the solution to the problem and yet refuses to act.

"The government has clearly recognized that permanent residency is what will give people access to the equality that they are demanding they deserve. But it's only for some and not for others," Cocq says.

As part of Canada’s economic recovery from the pandemic, the Trudeau government plans to accept 1.2 million newcomers to Canada over the next three years. The government says the 401,000 immigrants it would accept this year is the highest since 1913.

Immigration Minister Marco Mendicino declined our request for an interview, but in a statement, his spokesperson Alexander Cohen says the government is “seizing the opportunity to engage those immigrants who are already here, but without permanent status.”

The government has created one new initiative called the “Guardian Angels” program, which would allow people without permanent status and who worked in healthcare during the first wave of the pandemic to apply for permanent residency. But the requirements for eligibility are very narrow.

Yet Mendicino says he would like for it to be more broad in scope.

“We’ll deliver on our plan by making the most of the talent already within our borders. Their status may be temporary, but their contributions are lasting,” Cohen says in a statement.

"There are workers who are doing front-line dangerous work during the pandemic, throughout the economy. All of them are essential. All of them should have status," Faraday says.

Advocates say the government's decision to create "pathways to permanent residency" leaves people exploitable.

“We've created a system that very predictably puts them at a disadvantage and imposes human suffering unnecessarily, but in a way that is functional for other people who profit from it,” Faraday says. “That is not a basis on which to build an economy. That is a basis on building exploitation.”

Lily came to Canada on a temporary work permit seven years ago and has been working diligently ever since, navigating the onerous government system and various programs in order to get permanent status and reunite with three kids and grandkids.

“That was the goal back in 2014, but now it's 2021 and I am undocumented. I have no rights, no status,” she says.

She lost status last January after her last employer failed to properly complete the paperwork that she needed to get a new work permit and renew her status.

Even she doesn’t qualify for the government’s new program — despite doing a front-line job that many would consider makes her a hero.

“Hero? I don't know. I just go to work. I'm just hoping that the federal government will see that we all need the vaccines. We all need status. We all need permanent residency.

"The ones who are here, we are here already. We work. We pay taxes. So why don't you just try and meet us halfway?”

See this and other original stories about our world on The New Reality airing Saturday nights on Global TV, and online.

BACKGROUNDER

In Cuba, the post-Fidel era began ten years ago

Can events like Chanel Fashion Week can still happen in Cuba?

Alexandre Meneghini/Reuters

This article, originally published on January 23 2017, 

has been updated  to reflect ongoing developments 

in US-Cuba relations.

Last Friday, speaking in Miami’s Little Havana neighbourhood, president Donald Trump announced a change of American policy toward Cuba, which under the administration of Barack Obama had seen significant rapprochement with the US.

“Effective immediately, I am cancelling the last administration’s completely one-sided deal with Cuba,” he said.

Rhetoric aside, the policy Trump outlined doesn’t fundamentally alter many of his predecessor’s steps toward normalisation, including renewed diplomatic relations, unlimited visits for Cuban Americans visiting family back home and the end of the US immigration policy that had favoured Cubans.

And though the speech has the government and small businesses in Cuba on edge, no single Trump decree is likely stop the changes that have already swept the island over the past decade.

Trump’s changes do little to alter the fundamentals of

 the normalisation process started by his predecessor 

Barack Obama. Joe Skipper/Reuters

The post-Fidel area began ten years ago

Ever since Fidel Castro died in November 2016, foreign observers – journalists, political tourists, and the like – have been flocking to the streets of Havana. Let’s go and see communist Cuba before it is too late! they reason.

What this reaction misses is that Cuba has already changed: the post-Fidel era is already over a decade old.

My research, published in January 2017 in the Mexican Law Review, shows major shifts in the governing style and ideology of the country. The charismatic leadership that epitomised Fidel’s time in power is gone, replaced by a collective arrangement. And Cuba’s centrally planned economy has integrated market socialist features.

These changes will likely be accelerated by Barack Obama’s repeal of the US policy that gave Cuban migrants favoured immigration status – both by eliminating an escape route for dissatisfied citizens and by reducing potential future remittances. Trump does not plan to undo this change.
The end of charismatic leadership

When Fidel fell gravely ill in July 2006, he provisionally delegated his dual posts – president of the Council of State and first secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba – to his younger brother Raúl, long-time head of the Revolutionary Armed Forces and second secretary of the Communist Party. As Fidel’s health further deteriorated, the National Assembly made Raúl president in February 2008.

This move kept succession within the family, but Raúl has rejected any Kim dynasty-style future for the country. If ten years ago Cuba looked more like North Korea than China, today the opposite is true.

Leadership and ideology in surviving communist systems in 2016.

 Created by author. Author provided

THEY ARE NOT COMMUNIST THEY ARE STATE CAPITALIST 

THE PARTY IDEOLOGY ONLY IMPACTS THE SUPERSTRUCTURE

 OF THE STATE

(GRAMSCI)

Breaking with Fidel’s decades-old practice, Raúl recommended to the delegates of the sixth Party Congress in April 2011 that they limit public officials to a maximum of two five-year terms; this soon became the official Party line.

In the short term, term limits meant that Raúl Castro’s presidency would end in February 2018, which he has confirmed. In the long term, that raised questions on the post-Castro era. To be sure, in 2013 Miguel Díaz-Canel, a Communist Party insider, was promoted to first vice president of the Council of State – the first time ever that a revolutionary veteran did not hold that position. Technically, according to the Cuban constitution, if the president dies, the first vice-president takes over.

The seventh Party Congress, held in April 2016, nonetheless appointed Raúl Castro to be first secretary. While this does keep a revolutionary veteran in control of a key post after 2018, for the first time the head of the Cuba’s Communist Party will not be the same person as Cuba’s president.

The Castro brothers in 1996. Reuters

The rise of market socialism

Market socialism can be defined as “an attempt to reconcile the advantages of the market as a system of exchange with social ownership of the means of production.”

As if following this definition from the Oxford Dictionary of Social Sciences, the sixth Party Congress approved that from now on “planning will take the market into account, influencing upon it and considering its characteristics.”

This is a clumsy engagement with the market, treating it as an alien from outer space. And it epitomises the current ideological hardships of the Cuban regime.

Still, Raúl Castro has overseen the largest expansion of non-state socioeconomic activity in socialist Cuba’s 50-year history.

Cuba’s National Office of Statistics reports that in 2015 71% of Cuban workers were state employees, down from 80% in 2007, and the number of (mostly urban) self-employed workers has grown from 141,600 in 2008 to half a million in 2015. In a country with a total workforce of five million, this is not a trivial change.

From 2008 to 2014, more than 1.58 million hectares of idle land has been transferred into private hands. That’s nearly a quarter of Cuba’s 6.2 million hectares of agricultural land, roughly on par with state-owned land (30%)

.

Cuba’s agricultural land is being handed over to non-state developers.

Alexandre Meneghini/Reuters

In sum, the market is no longer the enemy, it’s a junior partner in Cuban central planning. The last Party Congress, Cuba’s seventh, approved the continuity of controlled liberalisation efforts by turning market socialism into Communist Party doctrine, stating that “the State recognises and integrates the market into the functioning of the system of planned direction of the economy.”

The new Cuban polity

The rise of market-socialist ideology emerged, to a substantial extent, from the decline of charismatic authority.

Cuba’s next generation of leaders –- expected to take over in 2018 -– will not enjoy the same unquestionable legitimacy as its founding fathers, much less that of Fidel Castro. So the inevitable passing of the revolutionaries still in power today, most of whom are in their 80s, makes the already difficult process of revamping the regime even tougher.

Raúl Castro’s challenge over the past decade has thus been not only to make his presidency stand on solid ground, but also to make sure that such a ground endures after he leaves. The question of economic performance was clearly central to that task.

Raúl saw market socialism as a way to strengthen Cuba’s economy without abandoning its Castro-era ideals. The revolutionary veterans’ interest in seeing the system they built survive is unsurprising, and it explains their rejection of any capitalist encroachments.

But it remains to be seen how long – and if – this ideological limit will survive them.

Small businesses like barbershops or food stands, now ‘normal’ in Cuba’s market socialism system, may be affected by Trump’s new policies. Alexandre Meneghini/Retuers

Let’s return to the earlier chart presenting a comparison of surviving Communist countries at present. It shows Cuba today, after ten years of Raúl, located somewhere in between North Korea (where an orthodox Soviet-style economy is still firmly entrenched) and countries such as China and Vietnam that have seen capitalism restored, and somewhat closer to the latter.

But the difference between “medium” market acceptance and “high” market acceptance is a substantial one. The latter presupposes a comeback of the bourgeoisie – the social class of owners of the means of production, expropriated by Castro’s revolution – and thus far this key ideological limit remains strong in Cuba.

Since the Soviet Union’s collapse in 1991, many have assumed that the fall of communist Cuba is a matter of when not if. Only by abandoning the focus on “the fall” and understanding how communist rule has survived in Cuba we can grasp how mightily Cuba has already changed.

January 23, 2017  •Updated June 19, 2017

Author

Ramón I. Centeno
Postdoctoral fellow, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM)
Disclosure statement
Ramón I. Centeno received funding for his doctoral studies –that produced this research– from Mexico's National Council of Science and Technology (Conacyt, for its acronym in Spanish). He also received financial support for two field trips to Cuba from the Department of Politics of the University of Sheffield, and the Society of Latin American Studies (SLAS). He has an editorial role in the Mexican political magazine 30-30.com.mx.

Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under Creative Commons licence.

BACKGROUNDER

Cuba is poor, but who is to blame – 

Castro or 50 years of US blockade?

RECENTLY THE TRUMP EMBARGO HAS CAUSED DESPERATE CUBANS TO TRY TO GET TO AMERICA UNLIKE THE BARCADI FAMILY 

THEY GET NO SPECIAL TREATMENT AND GET SENT BACK HOME

Alongside his depiction as a “brutal dictator”, negative reflections on Fidel Castro since his death on November 25 (2016) have focused on his “mismanagement” of the Cuban economy and the consequent “extremes of poverty” suffered by ordinary Cubans.

This caricature is problematic – not only because it ignores the devastating economic impact of the United States embargo over 55 years, but also because it is premised on neoclassical economic assumptions. This means that by stressing economic policy over economic restraints, critics can shift responsibility for Cuba’s alleged poverty on to Castro without implicating successive US administrations that have imposed the suffocating embargo.

This approach also ignores key questions about Cuba after the revolution. Where can medium and low-income countries get the capital to invest in infrastructure and welfare provision? How can foreign capital be obtained under conditions which do not obstruct such development, and how can a late-developing country such as Cuba use international trade to produce a surplus in a global economy which – many claim – tends to “unequal terms of trade”?

It was the search for solutions to the challenge of development that led Cuba’s revolutionary government to adopt a socialist system. They adopted a centrally planned economy in which state ownership predominated because they perceived this system as offering the best answer to those historical challenges.

But the commitment to operate within a socialist framework implied additional restraints and complications, particularly in the context of a bipolar world. My book, Che Guevara: the economics of revolution, examines the contradictions and challenges faced by the nascent revolutionary government from the perspective of Guevara’s role as president of the National Bank and minister of industries.

Literature on Cuba is dominated by “Cubanology”, an academic school central to the political and ideological opposition to Cuban socialism. Its emergence and links to the US government are well documented. Its arguments are that the revolution changed everything in Cuba – and Fidel (and then Raul) Castro have personally dominated domestic and foreign policy since, denying Cuban democracy and repressing civil society. Thanks to their mismanagement of the economy, growth since 1959 has been negligible. They simply replaced dependency on the US with dependency on the USSR until its collapse in 1990.

These ideas have also shaped political and media discourse on Cuba. But the problem with this analysis is that it obstructs our ability to see clearly what goes on in Cuba or explain the revolution’s endurance and Cuban society’s vitality.

What did Castro inherit?

Arguments about the success or failure of the post-1959 economy often hang on the state of the Cuban economy in the 1950s. The post-1959 government inherited a sugar-dominated economy with the deep socio-economic and racial scars of slavery. Cubanologist Jaime Suchlicki argues that Batista’s Cuba was “well into what Walter Rostow has characterised as the take-off stage”, while Fred Judson points to structural weaknesses in the Cuban economy: “Long-term crises characterised the economy, which had a surface and transient prosperity.” So while one side insists that the revolution interrupted healthy capitalist growth, the other believes it was a precondition to resolving the contradictions obstructing development by ending Cuba’s subjugation to the needs of US capitalism.

Following the revolution, Castro set out to bring social welfare and land reform to the Cuban people and to confiscate the ill-gotten gains of the Cuban elite. But when the defeated Fulgencio Batista and his associates fled Cuba, they stole millions of pesos from the National Bank and the Treasury. The country was decapitalised, severely limiting the capacity for public spending and private investments. Wealthy Cubans were leaving the island, taking their deposits and taxes with them. How was the new government going to carry out the ambitious socio-economic reforms without financial resources?

We have to consider these real circumstances at every juncture. For example, when the US embargo was first implemented, 95% of Cuba’s capital goods and 100% of its spare parts were imported from the US – and the US was overwhelmingly the main recipient of Cuban exports. When the Soviet bloc disintegrated, Cuba lost 85% of its trade and investment, leading GDP to plummet 35%. These events produced serious economic constraints on Cuba’s room for manoeuvre.

Putting a price on poverty

Moving on, we should also ask: how are we to measure Cuba’s poverty? Is it GDP per capita? Is it money-income per day? Should we apply the yardsticks of capitalist economics, focusing on growth and productivity statistics to measure “success” or “failure”, while paying little attention to social and political priorities?

Ration cards symbolise poverty and shortages in Cuba. EPA/Alejandro Ernesto

Even factoring in its low GDP per capita, the Human Development Index (HDI) lists Cuba in the “high human development” category; it excels not just in health and education, but also in women’s participation and political inclusion. Cuba has eliminated child malnutrition. No children sleep on the streets. In fact, there is no homelessness. Even during the hungry years of economic crisis of the 1990s, Cubans did not starve. Cuba stuck with the planned economy and it enabled them to ration their scarce resources.

Yes, salaries are extremely low (as both Fidel and Raul have lamented) – but Cubans’ salaries do not determine their standard of living. About 85% of Cubans own their own homes and rent cannot exceed 4% of a tenant’s income. The state provides a (very) basic food basket while utility bills, transport and medicine costs are kept low. The opera, cinema, ballet and so on are cheap for all. High-quality education and healthcare are free. They are part of the material wealth of Cuba and should not be dismissed – as if individual consumption of consumer goods were the only measure of economic success.

Operation miracle

The specific and real challenges Cuban development has faced has generated unique contradictions. In a planned economy, with an extremely tight budget, they have had to prioritise: the infrastructure is crumbling and yet they have first-world human development indicators. Infant mortality rates reveal a lot about the standard of living, being influenced by multiple socioeconomic and medical factors. Cuba’s infant mortality rate is 4.5 per 1,000 live births, which sits it among first-world countries – and above the US on the CIA’s own ranking.

It is not just Cubans who have benefited from these investments. Tens of thousands of Cuban doctors, educators and other development aid workers have served around the world. At present some 37,000 Cuban doctors and nurses work in 77 countries. They generate foreign exchange of some US$8 billion a year – Cuba’s biggest export.

In addition, Cuba provides both free medical treatment and free medical training to thousands of foreigners every year. As a direct initiative of Fidel, in 1999, the Latin American School of Medicine was inaugurated in Havana to provide foreign students from poor countries with six years of training and accommodation completely free. In 2004, Cuba teamed up with Venezuela to provide free eye surgery to people in three dozen countries under Operation Miracle. In the first ten years more than 3m people had their sight restored.

Prohibiting even trade in medicines, the US embargo led Castro to prioritise investments in medical sciences. Cuba now owns around 900 patents and markets pharmaceutical products and vaccines in 40 countries, generating yearly revenues of US$300m, with the potential for massive expansion. The sector produces more than 70% of the medicines consumed by its 11m people. The entire industry is state owned, research programmes respond to the needs of the population, and all surpluses are reinvested into the sector. Without state planning and investment it is unlikely that this could have been achieved in a poor country

.

Cuban researchers developed the first synthetic vaccine against a bacteria that causes pneumonia and meningitis. EPA/Alejandro Ernesto

In the mid-1980s Cuba developed the world’s first Meningitis B vaccine. Today, it leads in oncology drugs. In 2012 Cuba patented the first therapeutic cancer vaccine. The US embargo forces Cuba to source medicines, medical devices and radiology products outside the United States, incurring additional transportation costs.

Sharing economy

Ecuador’s president, Rafael Correa, told me in 2009:

A great example provided by Cuba is that in its poverty it has known how to share, with all its international programmes. Cuba is the country with the greatest cooperation in relation to its gross domestic product and it is an example for all of us. This doesn’t mean that Cuba doesn’t have big problems, but it is also certain that it is impossible to judge the success or failure of the Cuban model without considering the US blockade, a blockade that has lasted for 50 years. Ecuador wouldn’t survive for five months with that blockade.

Let’s consider the embargo: the Cuban government estimates that it has cost the island US$753.69 billion. Their annual report to the United Nations provides a detailed account of that calculation. That’s a lot for a country whose average GDP between 1970 and 2014 has been calculated at US$31.7 billion.

Yes, Castro presided over mistakes and errors in Cuba’s planned economy. Yes, there is bureaucracy, low productivity, liquidity crisis, debt and numerous other problems – but where aren’t there? Castro pointed to these weaknesses in his own speeches to the Cuban people. But President Correa is right – to objectively judge Castro’s legacy, Cuban development and contemporary reforms today, we cannot pretend that the US blockade – which remains today despite rapprochement – has not shaped the Cuban economy.

Castro almost saw out 11 US presidents since 1959, but he never lived to see the end of the US embargo. New challenges face Cuba, with economic reforms underway and the restoration of relations with the United States. Next week, I will begin new research in Cuba to assess the revolution’s resilience in this post-Castro, Donald Trump era.

December 2, 2016

Author

Helen Yaffe
LSE Fellow, Economic History, London School of Economics and Political Science
Disclosure statement
Helen Yaffe has received research funding from the Economic and Social Research Council.
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