| | |  Travel & Outdoors 
Cuba to Give Canada Expanded Air Access Within Island to Boost Tourism
 Mike Blanchfield - Canadian Press
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January 16, 2010
 |  | Last year, a record 900,000 Canadian tourists visited Cuba, and the Castro regime is anxious to top one-million this year. |  | | |
Ottawa — The Harper government has reached a new agreement with Cuba's communist regime that will give Canadian airlines expanded access to the Caribbean island's sunny skies, The Canadian Press has learned.
Under the deal, four Canadian charter airlines will be permitted to fly between multiple locations after landing in Cuba. That means winter sun seekers to Cuba would be able to fly on Canadian air carriers to more than one destination within the country, presumably on a single vacation.
The agreement comes just weeks after the United States tightened air travel restrictions on Cuba and 13 other countries, branding them terrorist threats following last month's incident when a bomber threatened to blow up a plane bound for Detroit.
Cuban officials confirmed Friday that the deal was to have been announced next week when Trade Minister Stockwell Day had planned to travel to Havana and the popular Varadero resort town to meet top Cuban officials and Canadian business leaders.
Day's trip was postponed Friday, his office said. Details of the new air agreement were expected to be made public in the coming days, but without the fanfare of a ministerial visit.
"We have signed recently a good agreement to give more opportunities to Canadian airlines," said Teresita de JesDus Vicente Sotolongo, the Cuban ambassador to Canada.
Last year, a record 900,000 Canadian tourists visited Cuba, and the Castro regime is anxious to top one-million this year. De JesDus Vicente Sotolongo said some Canadians fly to the island two to three times a year, and have forged close bonds with the Cuban people.
That contrasts sharply with Cuba's isolation with its superpower neighbour to the north. Because of the half-century-old U.S. embargo, Americans are forbidden from travelling to Cuba, which sits 145 kilometres off the tip of Florida.
De JesDus Vicente Sotolongo did not offer specifics about the new agreement but she said it would apply to four Canadian charter airlines that currently run tours to Cuba: Air Transat, Sunwing Airlines, WestJet and Canjet Airlines.
Last year, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said the U.S. embargo had not worked, and that Washington should lift it.
But Harper has also made clear that he views Cuba as a communist regime that has human-rights problems.
De JesDus Vicente Sotolongo said Day, whom she has met twice already, and other Harper cabinet members have conducted previous talks with her government "with respect."
Last year, Cuba cancelled a visit by Harper's Latin American cabinet minister, Peter Kent, the minister of state for foreign affairs for the Americas, after he criticized the Castro regime's human-rights record.
Kent eventually travelled to Cuba late last year.
With the arrival of Barack Obama in the White House last year, hopes were high that he would reverse a half-century of U.S. foreign policy and lift the embargo on Cuba.
Obama called for a new beginning in relations with Cuba. Raul Castro, who succeeded his ailing and iconic brother Fidel as president two years ago, also appeared ready for a rapprochement with Washington.
But de JesDus Vicente Sotolongo said Friday that momentum has been all but fizzled.
"The world wanted so much ... that the blockade will come to an end, that Mr. Obama will realize that this is a nonsense policy - no, a failed policy - towards Cuba," she said.
"I should say at this point that we are disappointed with the results." |
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