Liberals FLIP AGAIN on possible military role in Iran
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Summary
In yet another reversal, Canada could help efforts to keep the Strait of Hormuz open to oil tanker traffic. Canada's military facility in Kuwait was bombed by Iran early in the conflict, an incident kept secret from the Canadian public for almost two weeks. And an angry great-grandmother confronted Canadian MP Mark Gerritsen.
Transcript
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In yet another reversal, Canada could help efforts to keep the Strait of Hormuz open
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After appearing to reject requests for help in doing so from President Trump, Canada's
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defense minister now says he's open to the idea.
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Just to be clear, you're leaving the door, your government is leaving the door open to
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We're leaving the door open to be, I think, of assistance to any neighboring states that might require such assistance.
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But we will not be engaging offensively in this war.
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I want to be very clear. We are not going to be engaging offensively in this war.
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And the question of the Strait of Hormuz is one that is evolving. It's changing.
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It's hard to get hard information, to be honest with you, in terms of what's going on in the width of that particular strait.
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We're not quite sure what the overture was or is not, so we're going to talk amongst our NATO allies, and we will govern ourselves accordingly.
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Canada's military facility in Kuwait was bombed by Iran early in the conflict, an incident kept secret from the Canadian public for almost two weeks.
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Well, an angry great-grandmother confronted Liberal MP Mark Gerritsen.
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She had a long list of complaints about the Carney government, including men allowed in women's change rooms. Let's listen.
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$400 million, green swash fund, when are we going to get those documents?
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I always do, but when you come and you interrupt a conversation, a personal conversation.
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I really appreciate you taking the time to share this with me today.
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Bill C9, by the way, is aimed at combating hate speech, but many fear that it criminalizes
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Well, Cuba's communist regime is on the brink of collapse and U.S. President Trump says
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he's ready to take the island nation and do whatever he wants with it.
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You know, all my life I've been hearing about the United States and Cuba.
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I do believe I'll be the honor of having the honor of taking Cuba.
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Trump says he'll deal with Cuba after the war in Iran is completed.
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Cuba's national power grid collapsed this week,
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after the U.S. cut off supply of Venezuelan oil.
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Last month, Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand
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There are already signs that the Cuban regime is giving up on communism,
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though after 67 years. The Miami Herald reported Cuba is bringing economic reforms in to allow
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Cuban expats to invest and own private property on the island. Our guest today is Cesar Guillarte,
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who joins us. He's a Venezuelan expat, now proud Canadian. Welcome to the show, Cesar.
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Hi, Mark. Always a pleasure joining you. How are you?
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I'm fantastic. Thank you. Well, I'll tell you, it's the Cuban people who are not doing
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particularly well right now. They're off over there. And they really started going downhill
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when Trump cut off the supply of Venezuelan oil, because then, of course, they suffered
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a massive blackout right across the island. And that apparently has been alleviated, but
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it's not good. I mean, economically speaking, they are in as rough shape as they have ever
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been. What are you hearing about Cuba? Well, the collapse of the Cuban regime
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is the natural consequence of the fall of Maduro. Let's keep in mind that Cuba has never been able
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to stand on their own true feet ever since they became communists. They have always relied on a
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sponsor. It was the Soviet Union back in the day, and then they went through that special period
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Yeah, I mean, Canada has pledged some help to that.
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I mean, that's the double-edged sword that when you provide aid, it kind of props up the regime.
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You know, you want to help the people, but it's the regime that ends up taking that, monetizing it in whatever way they can.
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And so you end up, unfortunately, just perpetuating the communist regime.
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I had a conversation with a friend, with a Canadian friend of mine over the weekend,
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and I was telling him that we need to understand that similar to Venezuela,
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when you're dealing with Cuba, you're not dealing with a government.
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But long story short, there is a Cuban government conglomerate.
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They are pretty much the owners of every single industry in Cuba.
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So every dollar that you spend in Cuba, every ounce of aid that you send to Cuba, you're not sending it to the Cuban people.
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You're sending it to the government conglomerate.
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If you stay at a Cuban hotel, you are paying to Gaesa.
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If you fly on the airline, you're paying to Gaesa.
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Every single import, every single export in and out of Cuba goes through the government entity.
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Remington says that Cuban expats sent to the to the island, they all go through the government.
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So when we say that the country is collapsing, we're referring to this conglomerate of companies
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that are all owned by the by the Cuban government. And the issue is structural. It's not we're not
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talking about a very specific set of circumstances like a natural disaster. What we're seeing here
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is the result of years and decades of systematic mismanagement of the economy
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that have only allowed them to stay in power because they've had a sponsor.
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And Venezuela was sending oil, Venezuela was sending food.
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At one point, they say Venezuela was oxidizing the production of electricity
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in the island by sending engineers and equipment that they needed.
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And unfortunately, they became dependent on that.
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And Canada and other countries, not only Canada, I think Spain and probably Portugal are also sending aid.
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They see this as an attempt to, you know, remunerate the hardship that the Cuban people are going through.
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But you end up, what you're doing is effectively, you continue to prop the government.
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You are pretty much extending this period of hardship that they are going through right now.
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Because the issues that they have in the island are not going to be solved with an aid package.
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Not by Canada, not by the U.S., not by Russia, not by Venezuela.
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What we're seeing here is decades of its management.
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They have no way to generate the power they need.
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They don't have ways to produce the food that they need.
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I think the Cuban government should have collapsed 20 years ago.
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But then Chavez came into the picture and Chavez has kept them.
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And it's very sad for the Cuban people because they have experienced more oppression and more hardship than what they should have.
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Yeah, I mean, even Canadian tourism has helped the regime, sadly.
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I mean, I know that's not the intention of Canadians who go down to Cuba for some sun and fun and relaxation.
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But unfortunately, the money that is gleaned from that particular hospitality industry
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up in the pockets of people in the regime, the regular folks don't get a whole lot
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except maybe a dollar here or a dollar there in the way of tips.
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But now, really, it'd be an opportunity to see wholesale changes in Cuba,
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the kind that maybe people like yourself has been waiting decades to see.
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Miami Herald is reporting that Cuba is bringing economic reforms already.
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Now, I know you probably have some doubts about how many of those are going to be,
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but supposedly they're going to allow Cuban expats to invest and own businesses on the island.
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They want they're so desperate for currency that they're reaching out to Cubans who left that island years and maybe decades ago.
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And they're saying, you can come on back. We'll let you buy land and we'll let you run businesses.
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What do you think of that? Yeah. Well, I think for lack of a better expression, those those reforms are putting lipstick on a pig.
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The announcements that you mentioned in there called the government program or I think it was the Diaz-Canel plan, something like that.
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They are announcing that they are going to allow
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more municipal and private ownership of businesses.
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But none of these reforms are actually touching Giza,
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uh money to attract cash to the island it's the and i have no doubt that its intention it's to
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maintain the government it's to buy time for the government to stay there maybe a few more months
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maybe a few more years i don't really know um i think it's key to highlight that the cuban
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government doesn't just own everything in cuba it owns the parts that matter the most they have
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they have engineered this system where every transaction that happens in the island even if
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it's in the black market um it doesn't matter how small or how private it is it eventually ends up
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depositing money in the pockets of the government um i i have i have a personal anecdote i have a
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good friend who went there um and they spent uh he's canadian he goes there very very frequently
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he used to go there after the conversation that he and i had i don't think he's going anymore
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And he was telling me that they became friends with a taxi driver that was taking them to the
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actions. And at the end of their journey, at the end of the trip, they gave him a $100 tip.
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And the taxi driver told them, I cannot take this because if I show up with a $100 bill to store,
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they are going to call the national intelligence and they're going to throw me in jail and they're
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going to torture me because they want to know where the bill came from. If you want to help me,
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I'd rather you go to the store as a tourist, you buy $100 in food, in personal care items,
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and you give them to me. Those I can use. I cannot use $100 in Cuba. There's no way I can
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buy anything with this because everything is controlled by the government. And he was actually
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surprised. He told me the story and I told him, yeah, that's exactly how it is. Everything is
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controlled by the government and every single dollar that you spend there just went to patent
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the pockets of the dictatorship and um he was extremely surprised and extremely disappointing
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because it's not something that you that you hear every day and i think i don't think they're going
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to be going to cuba anytime soon at least for the next couple of years because now they know what
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the reality is for the people who did that yeah i imagine that controlling every dollar we spend
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is something that our own liberal government would be salivating over the prospect of doing
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well that's the intention behind the central bank digital currency yeah how sweet would that be yeah
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but we've got that trump talking about taking the island i guess taking the island over taking over
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the island and they were saying you're doing whatever you want i'm sure you saw that clip
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of him saying that what do you suppose he means by that and what do you think is going on in cuba
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as they hear that trump is planning on basically taking taking over cuba yeah i think this has to
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do with uh with the large uh nationalization that the cuban government did in in the 50s and the
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60s they pretty much took over every privately owned business on the island and the largest
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portion of those businesses were american we're talking about hotels we're talking about airlines
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even the phone company and the investments that all those companies had made. When Batista was
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the president of the country, they were U.S. made and the communists took over them and they never
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paid for them, which is what initially triggered the embargo. The legal framework in the U.S. that
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sets what we know as the embargo of us of today was a retaliatory measure by the U.S. government
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to essentially punish the Cuban government from renationalizing without pay all of those assets.
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So I think there is this belief, I think there is this perception that whatever is left in Cuba
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actually belongs to the U.S. because it was built by the U.S. and it was never it was never properly
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bought from them. So I think that when Trump says he's going to take the island, I think Trump is
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thinking about it. We're going to go in and we're going to recover those investments because they
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There is a lot of, I mean, Cuba and the U.S., even after the embargo, even after how cold the relationship between the two countries are, share a lot of history.
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So there are a lot of families that are actually looking forward to being able to travel to Cuba freely, spend their winters there, spend their vacations there, take their families, go to their own sexual homelands.
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And I think Trump is thinking about we're going to bring Cuba.
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I have no idea what the legal path forward would look like, but I'm thinking maybe something like Puerto Rico, maybe something like a free associate state where there is a lot of exchange between Cuba and the U.S.
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and gives the American companies the opportunity to recover some of the investments that were lost on time ago, but also gives the Cuban people the opportunity of having access to the world's largest market.
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If it's through tourism, if it's through, I don't know, oil, if it's through groceries, if it's through products.
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Let's keep in mind that Cuba is one of the countries that is the closest to the U.S.
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They are 90 nautical miles from the coast of Florida.
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So I think other than Canada and Mexico, Cuba definitely is in a very, very favorable position to take advantage of the U.S. and their economy.
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trump thinks and tests one thing today and then tomorrow he'll say another thing depending on how
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the opinions are swinging but i think that's what he's talking about yeah i think that makes a lot
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of sense but i can't help but wonder about the effort to rebuild cuba assuming that the communist
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regime collapses and you once again have freedom to express your thoughts outside out loud you know
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without the fear of being arrested and ending up in prison and maybe some freedoms in terms of
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the economy you know uh freedom to own property freedom to start companies and just i mean the
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promise now there is huge i mean the possibilities are endless now for companies going back in there
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you know setting up casinos stuff like the things that capitalist countries do
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giving the people an opportunity to work and make real money yeah uh that's going to be quite the
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effort after 67 years uh love the world yes communism now to change things around i mean
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if it happens i mean 10 years from now you know we could be going to cuba and having a good time
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or whatever rather than staying away from the island what do you think about that i mean uh
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with the time we've got left you know maybe can canadian companies could certainly be playing a
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role as well in investing in that i'm sure a lot of companies are salivating at the prospect of
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returning to cuba and investing in that country what do you think oh absolutely i think very
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similar to venezuela when we think about cuba we think about tourism and we think about venezuela
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we think about oil and that is true to an extent i think there are numerous industries uh that would
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be that would take advantage of the massive benefits that would bring investing in Cuba
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or investing in Venezuela. We're talking about agriculture. We're talking about energy in general.
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We're talking about infrastructure investments. But keep in mind that the infrastructure in Cuba
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and in Venezuela, it's decades beyond repair. I think the last thing they did to the airport in
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Havana was a fresh coat of paint when the Pope visited them, maybe 10 or 12 years ago. I don't
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think they've done anything anything beyond that it's decades of mismanagement it's decades of
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central planning so i think just opening the economy but really opening the economy not
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not this invitation for for the miami diaspora to go to go there and invest and and and buy clothes
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and buy rum i'm talking about truly opening the economies of both cuba and venezuela definitely
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will bring enormous opportunities for the people to improve their life spot and i think the people
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are ready i think the people in cuba the people in venezuela and i think everybody living on
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educatorships across the globe they're definitely ready because living in free societies where you
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can where you can take advantage of your entrepreneurial instincts that's that's the
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way to go that's that's something that we have naturally within us so we just need to be given
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the opportunity to exploit that that's something that both cuba and venezuela have been keeping
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from their people it's not only about freedom of expression it's not only about freedom of
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the press which obviously it's key and we need to address that as well i think it's the freedom to
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to exploit our entrepreneurial instincts what's going to be the best um the best outcome for this
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for this both for cuban for venison yeah i mean there will be billions of dollars funneled
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funneled into that country many of it much of it from you know cubans who left the country and
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you know made all sorts of money in the united states or elsewhere and then returning to that
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island i mean and you know i'm happy for the people of that island once it happens to throw
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off the shackles of communism all the while we have you know the communist mayor of new york city
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import those same disastrous policies it's just yeah yeah i think you and i spoke about this
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at a prior occasion but it's surprising how communism is so uh it's so popular amongst
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Cesar, thank you so much for coming on the show.
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