Canadian companies could face big losses as change looms in Cuba

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."

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.