6

Samaritanos canadienses?: Canadian Development Assistance in Latin America during the Trudeau Years

Asa McKercher

In A Samaritan State? External Aid in Canada’s Foreign Policy, Keith Spicer offered a dim view of Canadian aid programming in Latin America. Stressing that closer ties with countries in the region could be promoted through normal diplomatic and economic channels, he worried that aid expenditures in Latin America would create endless demands for ever larger sums, diverting money and attention away from more important priorities in the Commonwealth and French-speaking Africa. For Canada, the Western Hemisphere was of “limited concern.”1

Spicer’s outlook approximated that of successive Canadian governments, which have generally confined their interest in Latin America and the Caribbean to trade and investment while focusing their attention elsewhere. “Geographically, the United States screens Canada from Latin America,” admitted Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau’s government in 1970. “This is a constant factor which will always condition Canada’s relations with the area south of the Rio Grande.”2 However, under Trudeau Canada expanded its involvement in Latin America through the government’s first official development assistance programs for the region. Initiated in 1970, these bilateral programs were a significant sign that Canadian interest in development, which had traditionally focused on Asia, Africa, and the Commonwealth Caribbean, had now extended to Latin America.

This chapter explores the establishment and implementation of Canadian ODA for Latin America during the Trudeau years. Development assistance was an important manifestation of Canada’s belated interest in the region and a sign that Ottawa’s horizons seemed to extend beyond trade and investment. However, this ODA was bounded by several factors that underscore wider issues surrounding not just Canada-Latin America relations but development assistance in general in the rapidly changing decade of the 1970s: the connection between ODA and economic and security interests; the relationship between human rights performance and aid disbursements; and the domestic political controversies created by spending tax dollars abroad. To explore these interconnected issues and the ways in which they conditioned Canada’s ODA in Latin America, this chapter looks specifically at programs in Cuba and Chile, two countries enmeshed in the hemisphere’s cold war struggles. Overall, Canadian ODA during the Trudeau era underlines the extent to which, the symbolism of development programs aside, economic self-interest, especially trade promotion and protecting investment, has continued to define much of Canada’s official dealings with Latin America. But this, as Laura Macdonald notes in her chapter, is a focus that civil society groups have challenged vigorously.

Canada’s early aid program ignored Latin America, long seen in Ottawa as Washington’s responsibility. Stirred by the quickening pace of the region’s revolutionary politics after 1959, Lester B. Pearson’s Liberal government set aside $10 million annually for the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) in 1964, but refused to become a formal member of the bank.3 For the government’s foreign policy critics, including incoming Liberal prime minister Pierre Trudeau, elected in April 1968, this limited multilateral engagement was insufficient in a region that was virtually in Canada’s backyard. In his first major foreign policy speech as prime minister, Trudeau affirmed the need for Canada “to take greater account of the ties which bind us to other nations in this hemisphere.” Significantly, he urged Canadians to acknowledge the “economic needs” of their Caribbean and Latin American neighbours.4 Five months later, as a token of interest, five Trudeau cabinet ministers, together with the heads of ten government agencies, embarked on a month-long trek to Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Mexico, Peru, and Venezuela. Their report made clear that there was a need for Canadian assistance. “Economic and social development is the principal task facing all the countries the mission visited,” it noted, adding that development was “given high priority” in discussions with each government visited. Overall, the ministers recommended increasing export credits and insurance, joining the IDB, and introducing bilateral ODA programs.5

If the ministerial visit fired imaginations, then it was a slow burn, for Latin America was excluded from the mandate of the newly formed Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA). Still, the Trudeau government’s 1970 white paper on foreign policy, Foreign Policy for Canadians, gave official blessing to the idea of bilateral ODA for the region. Portraying Canada as a “distinctive North American country firmly rooted in the western hemisphere,” the document observed that the countries of the Americas needed Western-style development, supported by developed countries such as Canada. In an analysis steeped in modernization theory, the study affirmed that it was likely that the “judicious application of technology may well bring all the countries of that region to the point of economic ‘take-off.’” Until they reached that stage, however, governments required outside support, and the document recommended continuing IDB contributions, initiating bilateral technical assistance, increasing support for NGOs, and “encouraging the private sector to participate in Latin American development” through investment. The benefit for Canada would be an expansion of trade prospects that “would enhance Canadian sovereignty and independence,” a major concern for the Trudeau government, which worried about economic reliance on the United States. This approach suggests that, prior to the publication of the Third Option paper, in 1973—a strategy to diversify Canada’s economy away from the United States—Latin America already figured in Ottawa’s trade diversification schemes.6 This mix of economic self-interest and enthusiasm for development typified the Canadian approach to Latin America.

Foreign Policy for Canadians heralded a relative increase in official Canadian involvement in Latin America. Between 1970 and 1976, Ottawa sent four ministerial trade missions and the prime minister to the region, and joined both the Pan American Health Organization (1971) and the Inter-American Institute of Agricultural Sciences (1972), new channels for Canadian technical assistance. More important, in 1972 Canada became a permanent observer at the Organization of American States (OAS), stopping short of formal membership. Meanwhile, in 1970 CIDA initiated a bilateral ODA program for Latin America, the first one launched since 1961–62, when aid to francophone Africa was instituted.7 CIDA funding for projects in Latin America was limited to $10 million, though spending soon grew. While Canadian IDB money backed the construction of large-scale infrastructure projects, CIDA’s initial programs were focused on small-scale technical assistance. The aim, a CIDA report explained, was “to transfer skills and knowledge rather than capital, allowing Latin Americans to use their own resources, both physical and human, more effectively for economic and social development.”8

In addition to a growing suite of bilateral projects, Canada increased its activities in the IDB. In May 1972 Canada officially joined the IDB, committing $100 million over the next three years, plus $202 million to the bank’s fund for special operations. All loans made with Canadian money had to be approved jointly by Canada’s government and the IDB. “Together with bilateral assistance,” CIDA boasted, IDB funding “will raise Canada’s over-all Latin American program to about four times its former level.”9 In an indication that development in itself was not the sole justification for development spending, CIDA touted Latin America as “a very important potential market for Canadian exports and a source of valuable imports that will improve the Canadian standard of living.” IDB membership, the agency hoped, “should open up” new markets.10 By 1978, Canada had $400 million committed to the bank, with most of it spent on large signature projects.

After four years of programming, CIDA funding for Latin America received a major boost. In 1974, following a visit to several countries in the region, CIDA President Paul Gérin-Lajoie launched what the agency called “sweeping changes” to programming, including a raft of new bilateral technical assistance agreements and a concomitant increase in funding, nearly doubling spending in Latin America. Moreover, the number of personnel in CIDA’s Latin American division was doubled.11 These changes reflected Gérin-Lajoie’s personal interest in the region, including his sense of Latinité, the notion that French Canadians shared an innate bond with Latin Americans. He would embark on several tours of countries in the Western Hemisphere, including Cuba, which, as noted below, became an aid recipient under his watch and largely at his initiative.12 Gérin-Lajoie’s tenure at CIDA (1970–77) represented a period of intense Canadian interest in Latin American development.

Canadian multinational firms had long played a major role in Latin American economic development, and since the 1968 ministerial mission, promoting Canada’s economic interests had been critical to how Canadian ODA in the region was conceived. The connection between development and Canadian business was signified by CIDA’s close ties with the Canadian Association for Latin America (CALA), a business organization formed in 1969 to promote Canadian investment in Latin America and supported with CIDA funds. Close cooperation with CALA, explained CIDA in 1976, was bringing a “new view” to Canadian development efforts in Latin America, which included “alternative proposals” for bilateral ODA by “establishing contact between businesses and industries in Latin America and Canada.”13 The interplay between private economic interests and public development efforts typified the Canadian government’s prioritization of economic interests in Latin America, already a source of criticism for activists concerned by CIDA’s efforts in the region.14

Criticism of Canada’s government over close links between development and business mounted as the context for delivering foreign aid became more complicated in the mid-1970s. Throughout the decade, both globally and in Canada, human rights advocates, progressive development specialists, and political economists devoted increasing attention to the interconnected issues of global poverty, international human rights, and the overseas actions of Western multinational corporations.15 Motivated by these issues, some observers, most notably the Latin American Working Group, became deeply critical of Canadian financial involvement in and foreign policy toward Latin American countries with strongly authoritarian governments, including Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, and, especially, Chile.

In September 1970, Chileans had elected a Marxist government under Salvador Allende. For CIDA, which began planning its Latin American programming that year, Chile was not eligible for bilateral programming because its per capita income was too high, an issue, Laura Macdonald notes in her chapter, that has generally limited Canadian aid disbursement in Latin America. However, observing the Allende government’s “commitment” to development and surmising, correctly, that US assistance would decline (given Washington’s opposition to Allende), Canadian officials made a slight change in policy in early 1971, approving a limited aid program aimed at “supporting the new regime in its development efforts” in education, agriculture, and community development.16 Although most of the $10.4 million allocated for Latin America in fiscal year 1971–72 would be spent in Colombia, Brazil, and Ecuador, Chile was eligible to receive up to $100,000 and to draw on a $1 million regional projects fund, designed to bankroll a single long-term project.17

Given the fraught political situation within Chile itself—Allende’s coalition government faced considerable opposition not only from the Chilean middle class and conservatives but also from the radical left, which sought a wholesale revolution—CIDA officials were careful in allocating ODA. One official surveying the domestic political situation warned that efforts by “hard-line Marxists” within the government to “indoctrinate the masses against the existing institutions of the country” necessitated caution. Chile’s ruling coalition comprised both responsible social democrats and irresponsible radicals, who “may run off with the ball” and embarrass Canada ”with a project likely to be . . . contentious in the context of contemporary Chilean politics.”18 In the end, the Chileans submitted a modest request for $87,000 in technical assistance for the mining industry, a major element of the national economy.19 CIDA also began planning for a $1 million forestry project, and, through the IDB, Canada offered Chile a $4.32 million development loan for the State Technical University and a $4.3 million loan for the country’s telephone and telegraph systems.20 Additionally, Ottawa agreed in 1972 to reschedule Chilean debt.21 Collectively, Canadian efforts alleviated some of the economic and financial pressure faced by the Allende government as a result of US President Richard Nixon’s secret directive to make Chile’s economy “scream.”22

In Chile, economic pressures produced political chaos, which led to the September 1973 overthrow of Allende’s government by the military under General Augusto Pinochet. That December, with the military junta’s campaign of repression against Chilean leftists ongoing, and with public criticism directed toward the Trudeau government for its recognition of the regime and its initial refusal to accept refugees, Ottawa halted its bilateral ODA program in Chile.23 In effect, this meant an end to the forestry project and the suspension of future assistance. However, Canada continued to pay out the balance of the $87,000 mining project as well as the two IDB projects.

Reviewing economic policy toward Chile in light of the coup and ongoing criticism of Canada’s response to the resulting humanitarian crisis, officials from External Affairs (DEA), Industry, Trade and Commerce, and Finance agreed that further disbursements would be limited by “Canadian public opinion,” which was “highly sensitive” to the junta’s human rights violations. In effect, this decision represented a partial victory for Canadian human rights activists. However, officials noted that with the new regime encouraging foreign investment, “Canadian companies have re-entered the market and are actively looking for business opportunities,” especially in mining, a blow to activists anxious to hamstring the junta.24 A subsequent interdepartmental meeting in March 1974 approved the policy of avoiding new development assistance for Chile “until next autumn or until the termination of the state of emergency in Chile, whichever came first.” This committee did not envisage a formal termination of aid as a means of showing disapproval of the junta, a move already taken by the British, French, and other western European governments. Rather, officials judged that “conditions in Chile are not propitious to the resumption of technical assistance.”25 Clearly, human rights concerns were factored into the decision to allow the petering out of Canadian aid to Chile, but Ottawa’s position was not to make this point explicit. In a pattern that played out with assistance to Cuba as well as in Guatemala and El Salvador, Canadian policy downplayed the use of ODA as a lever to control the actions of other governments, a sign that respect for state sovereignty was paramount. Concerns for domestic politics and human rights were understated.

While Ottawa ruled out using the suspension of development assistance to send a message regarding human rights violations in Chile, other Canadian economic links with the country were expanded, generating intense criticism from Canadians concerned with human rights violations. They especially objected to increased export credits and insurance coverage through the Export Development Corporation (EDC), and continued support for Chilean debt relief through multilateral financial channels. Such measures were viewed as evidence that the Trudeau government was aiding the junta—and through export credits, was doing so with taxpayers’ dollars. Though CIDA had nothing to do with these financial decisions, critics judged it complicit as there seemed to be little difference between its loans and those advanced to Chile by multilateral banks. The Comité de Solidarité Québec-Chili, the leading solidarity group in Québec, denounced Gérin-Lajoie for his “vote with the US bourgeoisie for loans made in Chile by the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank.”26 In addition to urging an end to Canadian investment in Chile, activists exhorted the government to suspend CIDA aid and EDC support until Pinochet promised “the respect and protection of human rights.”27 Representing the Catholic Church and mainline Protestant denominations, the Canadian Council of Churches implored government ministers to prioritize “the struggles of the Latin American peoples toward justice and liberty, rather than the interests of the Canadian business community.”28

Ottawa responded by maintaining a distinction between economic and development questions and human rights issues, a position adopted not just on Chile, but in general. In a 1976 summary defending support for World Bank loans to Chile, diplomat Eric Bergbusch wrote that Canada did “not condone curtailment of human rights in Chile or elsewhere.” Decisions, he continued, were based “on development related criteria and that such loans should not be used to exert political leverage.” Rather, foreign capital would promote economic development, which would “be more effective in changing undesirable characteristics of regimes with which we may disagree than overt political pressure.”29 This viewpoint aligned with Canadian economic interests but not with the promotion of human rights. Yet Ottawa was at least consistent across the ideological spectrum, for in addition to supporting Chile’s reactionary junta, it also provided ODA to communist Cuba.

Canadian aid for Cuba, a country sanctioned and embargoed by the US, crossed a significant cold war boundary. Though Canada had maintained diplomatic and economic ties with Fidel Castro’s government since the Cuban revolution in 1959, it had carefully restricted the types of goods traded, and minimized the importance of the relationship. Under Trudeau’s strategy of expanding relations with Latin America, Canada embraced Cuba more openly and warmly, transforming the country into a leading Canadian export market in the region.30 As part of this embrace, in early 1971, officials in the Department of External Affairs debated establishing an ODA program for Cuba in response to Cuban signals that it desired to tap into the new Canadian funding available for the hemisphere.

While Ken Brown, Canada’s ambassador in Havana, pressed for aid to strengthen a growing relationship, Marcel Cadieux, the Canadian ambassador in Washington, warned against any move that would anger the Americans and “have the rather curious result of placing us with the Soviet Union,” which backed Cuban development. Weighing these two divergent views, Klaus Goldschlag, director general of the department’s Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs, decided that the benefits of a limited assistance program outweighed any drawbacks. Even though Cuba was a communist state with a mismanaged economy, he insisted that the country was “one of our best commercial customers in Latin America” and that aid might lead to further exports. Although a backlash from the United States and regional right-wing governments was possible, he concluded that there “is no innate reason why foreign policy should not from time to time break new ground.”31 Canadian ODA for Cuba would be ground breaking, indeed.

Goldschlag’s conclusion, along with a Cuban funding request for two small technical assistance projects on language training and audiovisual instruction, filtered their way into a memorandum that Foreign Minister Mitchell Sharp put to cabinet in July 1971. These projects, Sharp admitted, were innocuous, but their symbolic and political importance was large. Not only would Cuba be the first communist country to receive Canadian aid but it remained “a willing and cooperative member of the Soviet camp which actively lends itself to the furtherance of Soviet designs in the Western Hemisphere.” While such considerations might normally disqualify it from receiving aid, Sharp worried that the island’s exclusion from CIDA aid would send a negative message to Havana just as Canada sought more cooperative relations. Moreover, there was “no doubt” that Castro’s government was committed to development policies redressing “social inequality,” an effort that should be encouraged. Given these competing factors, cabinet agreed to a development funding program for Cuba, but one limited in scope.32

Cabinet’s decision opened the door to Canadian ODA to Cuba, a remarkable development given the political and international climate of the Cold War. To meet the two Cuban technical assistance requests, funding was directed through the Canadian University Service Overseas (CUSO), which placed Canadian students on development projects abroad. In early 1973 CIDA offered a $1.1 million grant for a three-year program that sent engineering faculty from Canadian universities to Cuba and brought Cuban students to study in Canada; provided veterinary assistance in tackling an African swine fever outbreak; and paid for more CUSO language training.33 These modest technical assistance projects were a first step to a larger Canadian development effort in Cuba. Certainly, CIDA officials, including Gérin-Lajoie, were soon planning to triple Cuban program funding annually. As the resulting sum would rival Canadian efforts in Colombia, Peru, and Brazil, major regional recipients of Canadian ODA, undersecretary (or deputy minister) A. E. Ritchie reminded Gérin-Lajoie of cabinet’s support for a limited program, noting that “total aid should not be out of proportion to our interest in Cuba or Latin America.”34

For advocates of a closer Canada-Cuba relationship, this development spending, however limited, was welcomed. In January 1974, Malcolm Bow, Brown’s successor in Havana, had an hour-long private meeting with Castro. The loquacious Cuban leader expressed how “enthusiastic” he was about Canadian aid programs.35 The following month, a CIDA team led by Gérin-Lajoie visited the island for a five-day tour of Cuban agricultural and educational facilities. Speaking to accompanying reporters, Cuban president Osvaldo Dorticós Torrado praised the way that “relations are developing between our two countries,” while Gérin-Lajoie characterized the visit as a “springboard” to deeper relations.36 Indeed, the CIDA trip resulted in technical agreements for loans and grants with spending commitments well above cabinet’s “limited” directive.37

Back in Ottawa, officials in External Affairs were concerned by Gérin-Lajoie’s enthusiasm. Prior to the CIDA president’s departure, Sharp had urged him to keep ODA to Cuba in balance with overall assistance to the rest of Latin America, reminding him that under the 1971 cabinet decision funding for Cuba would be approved only on a project-by-project basis. Instead Gérin-Lajoie promised an ODA package of $6–7 million in soft loans and $3–4 million in grants over three years to fund public health, pharmaceutical, and animal health initiatives. He also encouraged Cuba to submit additional projects for consideration and agreed to a joint study of long-term CIDA-Cuba cooperation. “All of the above points represent a considerable departure from the policy which was agreed,” complained External Affairs staff, who worried that Cuban expectations were being raised to unrealistic heights.38

Indeed, CIDA wanted even more. It soon emerged that it was planning, without consulting the diplomats in External Affairs, to offer Cuba soft loans and grants worth $23.5 million over four years, making Cuba the largest recipient of Canadian ODA in Latin America. Ritchie pushed back, convincing the enthusiastic CIDA president to withdraw this grandiose proposal.39 In the end, Cuba received a $10 million program loan over three years beginning in 1976–77, on top of the almost $5 million in technical assistance and loans extended between 1972–73 and 1975–76. In all, between 1972 and 1978, Cuba received $14.88 million in Canadian aid. In addition, as part of Ottawa’s efforts to expand trade and investment with Cuba, the EDC made available a $100 million line of credit.40

From the start, assistance to Cuba provoked criticism within Canada. Amid media stories of cabinet infighting and reports that CIDA was trying to conceal the extent of its assistance package from public scrutiny, former Liberal cabinet minister Paul Hellyer publicly denounced the aid program, and members of the Progressive Conservative opposition wondered why taxpayers’ money was being sent to a “totalitarian state.”41 The situation worsened in late 1975, when Cuba’s armed forces intervened in Africa in support of anti-colonial fighters in Angola, sparking opposition demands that the government withhold its aid “until such time as the government in Cuba withdraws.”42 Between January 1976 and 1978, opposition members of Parliament introduced over a dozen motions calling for a halt to CIDA spending and EDC credits. When a Cuban spy ring was later discovered in Montreal, Douglas Roche, a Progressive Conservative MP and human rights activist, angrily declared that “whatever good CIDA’s agricultural projects are doing in Cuba, it is not possible to support them when Cuba finds the resources to send troops” abroad or spy on Canada.43

In defending his government’s position, Trudeau insisted that it was “not Canadian policy to base our aid on all aspects of the foreign policy of a country receiving it.” Canada’s aid program, he explained, “is not linked to the ideology of a particular country.”44 This stance—on display with both right-wing Chile and communist Cuba—reflected traditional Canadian policy, but it failed to appease critics who had begun to link aid, foreign policy, and human rights. Given such criticism of the already controversial Cuban aid program, it was not surprising when CIDA officials announced in February 1977 that existing programs would expire once funding ran out at the end of fiscal year 1977–78 and that no new projects were planned. Aid to Cuba had become too controversial. In May, when asked by Roche if the government would cut aid to exert pressure on Cuba, Foreign Minister Don Jamieson assured him that the government was “phasing down, or at least winding up” its Cuba programs. He gave no public indication that this was being done to exert pressure on Havana.45

By February 1978 program spending had completely dried up, encouraging ministers to terminate Cuba’s eligibility for further CIDA aid in July. Canadian officials stressed that the decision not to pursue the CIDA program in Cuba was not aimed at forcing change in Havana.46 Rather, Cuban diplomats were informed that Cuba’s intervention in Africa and its nefarious intelligence operations, including an attempt by Cuban spies to recruit a Canadian tour guide, made it impossible to defend development spending in Canada.47 The last CUSO program was ended in 1980, when a new foreign minister, Mark MacGuigan, secured cabinet agreement to terminate it. More assertive than Jamieson, MacGuigan explained publicly that Canada had been willing to assist the Cubans “up until the point when Cuba decided that it could afford the luxury of despatching expeditionary forces to Africa. Clearly it then had no more need for Canadian aid, given its new priorities.”48

Aid to Chile and Cuba was indisputable evidence of the Trudeau government’s interest in Latin America and in development in the region. Yet there were clearly limits to this policy of engagement, limits reflected in the low level of aid funding relative to other regions of the globe, and in Ottawa’s continuing focus on using aid to secure Canadian economic interests. More significantly, the domestic debate over assistance to Chile and Cuba in the 1970s underlined foreign aid’s increasingly controversial nature and its indissoluble links to human rights and the political behaviour of recipient states. Over the course of this pivotal decade, Canadian observers of government development programs grew more vocal in linking aid and human rights performance. Indeed, there was a change in the understanding of sovereignty and the legitimacy of interfering in another state’s domestic affairs that made aid to Chile and Cuba especially difficult for the Trudeau government. “The Government of Canada should reduce to a minimum its material assistance to, and symbolic approval of, governments that commit gross violations of human rights,” stated Progressive Conservative MP Douglas Roche, summimg up the new consensus in 1979.49

In response to such criticisms, government leaders were keen to emphasize, as Trudeau did, that Canada had “not made it a condition of our assistance to starving people in the third world that their government be above reproach.”50 He insisted that development assistance should be spent regardless of a government’s internal, domestic actions. This thinking fit with the Trudeau government’s stance on promoting international human rights at the bilateral level, where policy was motivated by a very traditional and scrupulous respect for state sovereignty and the notion that a government was uniquely responsible for its own domestic sphere. It was consistent too with Trudeau’s fear of external meddling within Quebec, whose separatist forces were reaching their apogee at the end of the decade. When limits were drawn, as was the case with Chile and Cuba, they reflected strong domestic pressures, which made continuing development programming too politically costly for the government.

Notes

1 Keith Spicer, A Samaritan State? External Aid in Canada’s Foreign Policy (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1966), 62.

2 Canada, Department of External Affairs (DEA), Foreign Policy for Canadians: Latin America (Ottawa: Information Canada, 1970), 5. On the Trudeau government and Latin America, see Brian Stevenson, Canada, Latin America, and the New Internationalism: A Foreign Policy Analysis, 1968–1999 (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2000); James Rochlin, Discovering the Americas: The Evolution of Canadian Foreign Policy Towards Latin America (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1994).

3 Cabinet Conclusions, 3 December 1964, RG 2, vol. 6265, Library and Archives Canada (LAC).

4 DEA, Statements and Speeches 68/17, 29 May 1968.

5 Canada, Preliminary Report of the Ministerial Mission to Latin America, October 27–November 27, 1968 (Ottawa: DEA, 1969).

6 DEA, Foreign Policy for Canadians: Latin America, 5, 6, 12, 28.

7 CIDA, Canada and the Developing World: CIDA Annual Review 1970–1971 (Ottawa: Information Canada, 1971), 4.

8 CIDA, Annual Review 1972–1973 (Ottawa: Information Canada, 1973), 32.

9 “Canada in IDB,” CIDA Contact, June 1972.

10 “Stronger ties with Latin America: Canada joins regional bank,” Cooperation Canada, July/August 1972.

11 CIDA, Annual Review 1973–1974 (Ottawa: Information Canada, 1974), 40.

12 “Latin American Visit,” CIDA Contact, April 1976; David Morrison, Aid and Ebb Tide: A History of CIDA and Canadian Development Assistance (Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University Press), 123.

13 “New View of Latin America,” CIDA Contact, September 1976; “CIDA Knows What’s Good for Business,” Last Post, January 1975; And see RG 25, vol. 9045, file 20-4-CALA, LAC.

14 Latin American Working Group, Canadian Aid: Whose Priorities? A Study of the Relationship between Non-Governmental Organizations, Business, and the Needs of Latin America (Toronto: Latin American Working Group, 1973).

15 See, for example, Stephanie Bangarth, “‘Vocal but not particularly strong?’: Air Canada’s Ill-fated Vacation Package to Rhodesia and South Africa and the Anti-Apartheid Movement in Canada,” International Journal 71, no. 3 (2016): 488–97.

16 Tansley to Gérin-Lajoie, 16 March 1971, RG 25, vol. 8636, file 20-1-2-CUBA, LAC.

17 CIDA to Santiago, “Status Report – Bilateral Technical Assistance Programme,” 25 May 1971, RG 25, vol. 12049, file 38-9-1-Chile, LAC.

18 Santiago to DEA, D-242, 27 September 1971, RG 25, vol. 12049, file 38-9-1-Chile, LAC.

19 Smith, “Technical Assistance: Chile,” 5 May 1971, RG 25, vol. 12049, file 38-9-1-Chile, LAC.

20 CIDA to Santiago, tel. 2249, 28 September 1972, and Notes for GWP Liaison Visit, November 1972 – Santiago, RG 25, vol. 12049, file 38-9-1-Chile, LAC.

21 Aid and Development Division, “Chilean Debt,” 5 July 1973, RG 25, vol. 11919, file 38-6-1-Chile, LAC.

22 Quoted in Jonathan Haslam, The Nixon Administration and the Death of Allende’s Chile: A Case of Assisted Suicide (London: Verso, 2005), 98.

23 DEA to Santiago, tel. 517, 21 December 1973, RG 25, vol. 11919, file 38-7-1-Chile, LAC. On public reaction and pressure on the government, see John Hilliker, Mary Halloran, and Greg Donaghy, Canada’s Department of External Affairs, vol. 3: Innovation and Adaptation, 1968–1984 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2017), 160–63.

24 Nutt, “Minutes of Interdepartmental Meeting on Economic Policy toward Chile,” 5 February 1974, RG 25, vol. 11919, file 38-7-1-Chile, LAC.

25 Ritchie to Minister, 28 March 1974, RG 25, vol. 11919, file 38-7-1-Chile, LAC.

26 “Noranda et l’état Canadien s’entendent à merveille avec la dictature chilienne,” Chili-Québec Informations, Avril 1976. Translation mine.

27 Coalition on Canadian Policy Towards Chile, “Canada and the Rights of the Chilean People,” March 1976, MG 32 C26, vol. 79, file 7, LAC.

28 Canadian Council of Churches, “Canadian Policy Toward Chile,” 9 October 1974, MG 28 I103, vol. 495, file 18, LAC.

29 DEA to Washington, EDC-74, 19 January 1976, RG 25, vol. 11919, file 38-7-1-Chile, LAC.

30 Robert Wright offers a warmer view of Trudeau’s dealings with Cuba than do Greg Donaghy and Mary Halloran. See Robert Wright, Three Nights in Havana: Pierre Trudeau, Fidel Castro and the Cold War World (Toronto: HarperCollins, 2007); and Greg Donaghy and Mary Halloran, “Viva el pueblo Cubano: Pierre Trudeau’s Distant Cuba, 1968–78,” in Our Place in the Sun: Canada and Cuba in the Castro Era, ed. Robert Wright and Lana Wylie (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009), 143–62.

31 Havana to DEA, tel. 16, 8 January 1971, Washington to DEA, tel. 30, 5 January 1971, and Goldschlag, “Technical Assistance to Cuba,” 4 March 1971, RG 25 vol. 8636, file 20-1-2-CUBA, LAC.

32 Memorandum to Cabinet, No. 757-71, 29 June 1971, RG 55, box 6, file 5075-4/C962, LAC; Cabinet Conclusions, 22 July 1971, RG 2, vol. 6381, LAC.

33 “Assistance to Cuba,” CIDA Contact, March 1973; “$1 Million to Send Professors to Havana, Ottawa’s Plan,” Globe and Mail, 23 January 1973.

34 Ritchie to Gérin-Lajoie, 19 September 1973, RG 25, vol. 11922, file 38-1-7-CUBA, LAC.

35 Havana to DEA, tel. 36, 9 January 1974, RG 25, vol. 16074, file 20-1-2-CUBA, LAC.

36 Lionel Martin, “Canada, Cuba Forming Ties through CIDA,” Globe and Mail, 12 February 1974.

37 “Visit to Cuba and Haiti,” CIDA Contact, March 1974.

38 Aid and Development Division to PDM, 4 March 1974, RG 25, vol. 12050, file 38-9-1-CUBA, LAC.

39 Aid and Development Division to PDE, 9 August 1974, RG 25, vol. 12050, file 38-9-1-CUBA, LAC.

40 Gotlieb to Minister, 17 May 1978, RG 25, vol. 16074, file 20-1-2-CUBA, LAC.

41 “Secret Sugarplum to Cuba Splits Cabinet,” Globe and Mail, 21 December 1974; “CIDA Conceals Full Amount of Huge Aid Package to Cuba,” Ottawa Journal, 7 May 1975; Paul Hellyer, “CIDA’s Proposed Agreement with Cuba Shows Need for Review of Aid Programs,” Ottawa Citizen, 6 June 1975; Canada, House of Commons, Debates, 24 April 1975, 5196.

42 Canada, House of Commons, Debates, 20 November 1975, 9272; “End Aid to Cuba House Urged,” Globe and Mail, 27 January 1976.

43 Canada, House of Commons, Debates, 1 February 1977, 2628.

44 Canada, House of Commons, Debates, 3 February 1976, 10572, and 6 February 1976, 10703; “PM rejects aid cut,” Globe and Mail, 10 February 1977.

45 “Canadian Aid to Cuba Slowly Winding Down,” Montreal Gazette, 11 February 1977; Canada, House of Commons, Debates, 8 May 1977, 5229.

46 Brief for Minister Regan, 18 April 1980, RG 25, vol. 15285, file 55-26-1-CUBA, LAC.

47 Korth to file, 13 December 1978, RG 25, vol. 16074, file 20-1-2-CUBA, LAC.

48 DEA, Statements and Speeches 82/12, 31 March 1982; P. Whitney Lackenbauer, ed., An Inside Look at External Affairs during the Trudeau Years: The Memoirs of Mark MacGuigan (Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 2002), 128–29.

49 Douglas Roche, “Toward a Foreign Policy for Canada in the 1980s,” International Perspectives (May/June, July/August 1979), 6.

50 Canada, House of Commons, Debates, 2 March 1977, 3574.