Why was Canada conducting espionage in Cuba on behalf of the United States?

On September 26, the Globe and Mail revealed that Canadian diplomats in Havana were spying on Cubans in 2016 and 2018, around the time of alleged “sonic attacks” on US and allied intelligence agents in the Cuban capital. As part of these spying operations, Canadian diplomats used satellite equipment that had been illegally smuggled into Cuba by the US government. Such operations appear to violate the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, which “requires diplomats to respect the laws of countries in which they operate.” They also form part of a longer Canadian history of supporting US espionage in Cuba, dating back to the early 1960s.

Facing a lawsuit by Canadian diplomats allegedly affected by “sonic attacks” in Havana, the Canadian government has invoked Section 38 of the Canada Evidence Act , which “restricts disclosure of matters that could harm national security, national defence or international relations,” to prevent the release of information clandestine Canadian operations in Cuba on behalf of the US government.

Globe and Mail journalist Robert Fife writes that adverse health symptoms experienced by US and Canadian spies and diplomats in Havana from 2016 to 2018 were caused by “alleged sonic attacks linked to Russia.” There is no evidence, however, that foreign intelligence agencies are to blame for the so-called “ Havana Syndrome ” symptoms, which include “headaches, dizziness, blurred vision, tinnitus [and] vertigo.” The US government itself has rejected the involvement of geopolitical adversaries in the incidents. A 2023 analysis by the US Intelligence Community found that “preexisting conditions, conventional illnesses and environmental factors” were likely to blame for the neurological symptoms experienced by US and Canadian officials in Havana. A 2025 study later asserted that it was “very unlikely” that any foreign power deployed “a novel weapon or prototype device to harm even a subset” of affected individuals.

The first Donald Trump administration used these alleged “sonic attacks” to justify closing its Havana embassy in 2017, just two years after Trump’s predecessor, Barack Obama, had reopened it. Trump then tightened the already debilitating and flagrantly illegal US blockade of Cuba to unprecedented levels of cruelty, imposing 243 new economic sanctions as part of his “maximum pressure campaign” (which Trump’s successor Joe Biden continued). Washington’s efforts to suffocate the Cuban people intensified in the years that followed, including through the absurd “state sponsor of terrorism” designations of 2021 and 2025 and the blocking of much-needed fuel imports to the island.

Cubans today are suffering the effects of this barbaric US siege, whose explicit goal is to create hunger, medicine shortages, and energy blackouts in the island nation of 11 million people. Florida Representative Carlos Gimenez celebrated the intensified US siege of Cuba under the banner of “ no oil, no travel, no oxygen ,” while Representative Maria Elvira Salazar, also from Florida, admitted that the US is deliberately depriving Cubans of food and medical care. Enemies of Cuba see the US-manufactured hardship as their chance to finally overthrow the Cuban revolution and reimpose neocolonial control over the country.

The Globe and Mail article gives unwarranted attention to discredited claims of foreign involvement in “Havana Syndrome.” Importantly, though, the piece draws attention to little-known Canadian operations, in collaboration with the CIA, to spy on a small, besieged target of US imperialism. This is not the first time that Canadians have been caught spying on Cuba on behalf of the US empire. In fact, Canada has a long history of anti-Cuba espionage in coordination with the US—a history that complicates the widely accepted notion that Ottawa’s policy toward Cuba differs dramatically from Washington’s and helps to explain the Canadian government’s current unwillingness to condemn this intensified imperialist aggression.

In the early 1960s, the US government asked the Canadian embassy in Havana to acquire intelligence on Washington’s behalf, including military intelligence, economic data, popular publications, and more. The Canadian government obliged. Under Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson, Ottawa deployed at least one diplomat to Havana who was tasked with “full-time intelligence work,” according to historian Don Munton . Canadian spies were accredited diplomats, giving them “official cover” to assist US surveillance of Cubans.

One External Affairs memorandum noted: “We have an interest in the flow of information of a high and valuable character from our embassy in Havana… much of which is passed to the United States.” A mid-1960s analysis of Canadian and US policy on Cuba stated that “there was a remarkable free exchange of intelligence material” between Canada and the US. Into the early 1970s, Canada “responded to American requests for specific information” Cuba, leading Canadian espionage operations on the island to “involve more offensive, and often covert, human intelligence collection.” In this way, Canadian spies “helped fill the intelligence void created by the loss of the US embassy in Havana” and provided the CIA with much-desired information the Cuban people—at the same time that US intelligence stoked terrorist violence and deployed biological and chemical warfare against the island.

[Canada’s] Department of External Affairs conducted foreign intelligence operations in Fidel Castro’s Cuba at the behest of the United States… External Affairs shared raw and processed information with the State Department, the US intelligence community, and the United Kingdom. The diplomat-spies undertook “tasked” operations, responding to specific requests from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and other US intelligence bodies… They also used Cuban sources and agents.

In this way, Canada helped spy on Cuba on behalf of an aggressive imperialist power that was subjecting the small island nation to terrorism, assassination attempts, biological and chemical warfare, and an illegal economic blockade. As the recent Globe and Mail piece reveals, this collaboration did not end with the conclusion of the Cold War.

According to Fife, Canadian spies in Cuba in 2016 and 2018 “gathered intelligence on behalf of allies, including from outside of the capital of Havana.” This intelligence was sent to “the intelligence division at Global Affairs Canada, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service and Canada’s Five Eyes partners: the U.S., Britain, Australia, and New Zealand.” On occasion, Canadian spies passed information directly to a CIA agent at the US embassy.

Fife details a Canadian espionage operation in Havana in late 2016:

[A source] said the U.S. sent satellite equipment in diplomatic sea containers for Canada’s use in late 2016. Under the Vienna Convention, which forbids the of diplomatic packages, the Cubans were not allowed to open the containers. The source said the electronic equipment was later alleged to have been picked up by a Canadian diplomat and set up on the roof of the Canadian embassy and homes of certain Canadian diplomats.

According to Fife’s sources, Washington held Canada’s espionage abilities in high regard because “Canadian diplomats had better access to Cuban officials and were allowed to travel outside of Havana.”

Fife reports that Canadian officials spied on Cuba because “Global Affairs believed Russia was behind the [alleged] sonic attacks.” But he fails to mention the long history of Canadian involvement in espionage against Cuba, dating back to the early 1960s.

Throughout some of the US empire’s most brutal and aggressive acts against Cuba, Canadian spies assisted US intelligence-gathering on the island nation. As such, new revelations of Canadian espionage in Cuba—in collaboration with the CIA and apparently in violation of international law—should surprise no one.

In the context of intensified US aggression against Cuba, the Canadian government has refused to lift a finger or even publicly condemn the US for engineering a humanitarian crisis on the island. Solidarity networks across the country, first and foremost the Canadian Network on Cuba , have mobilized to fill the gap created by government inaction.

In July, the Carney government went so far as to abstain from a United Nations General Assembly vote on holding a debate “the necessity of ending the economic, commercial and financial embargo imposed by the United States of America against Cuba.” Nine countries voted against holding a debate, among them the US, Israel, and Ukraine. Thirty countries abstained, including Canada. A total of 136 countries voted in favour.

According to a People’s Voice exclusive , US Secretary of State Marco Rubio offered Ottawa trade war relief in exchange for Canada supporting the illegal US blockade of Cuba at the UN General Assembly. Since 1992, the UNGA has voted with near-unanimity to demand an end to the almost 70-year US blockade of Cuba. Despite Canadian support for CIA espionage on Cuban soil, the Canadian representative at the UN has always voted with the global majority to end the blockade. Given Carney’s manifold concessions to Washington, it is possible that he will reverse this long-standing Canadian position at the UNGA vote in October—a reversal that Canadians must mobilize to prevent.

Setting aside its focus on the dubious claims surrounding “Havana Syndrome,” the Globe and Mail piece shines a light on Canada’s true policy toward Cuba. Far from supporting the island nation against US aggression, Canadian officials have assisted CIA operations in Cuba since the early 1960s—operations that continued until at least 2018 and may still be ongoing. This history provides important background for Ottawa’s decision today to abandon Cuba to US imperialist brutality.

Owen Schalk is the author of four books on Canadian foreign policy, including Targeting Libya and Canada & NATO: Myth of a Global Peacekeeper .

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