Evan Dyer only works to interview anti-government Cuban Canadians: Internal CBC emails
Image of Evan Dyer speaking on a CBC News show. Image Credit: @EvanDyerCBC/’X’
Written by: Aidan Jonah
ATIPs obtained by The Canada Files show CBC reporter Evan Dyer to be a biased anti-communist who only wants to share the stories of Cuban Canadians against the Cuban government.
Dyer and CBC’s requirement to provide balance and impartiality
CBC’s Journalistic Standards and Practices document notes that “we strive to avoid actions that create an impression of partisanship or of advocacy for a cause”. In its mandate section, the CBC notes that all its employees “must respect all of the principles of the Journalistic Standards and Practices,” particularly (bold added by writer) “accuracy, fairness, balance, impartiality and integrity.”
The internal CBC emails show Dyer regularly has kind words for Cuban dissidents who email him with praise. In an August 2021 conversation (Pg. 89, 00042) with a Cuban Canadian dissident activist who promised to “change that view of Canadians [positive view of Cuba] by organizing rallies and talks to the public”, Dyer said “you [this person] clearly appreciate Canadian democracy a lot more than they do.”
Dyer went on to say “the ten notes I received from Cuban-Canadians were all positive, and those are the ones that matter to me. I don't know why people who grow up in a free democracy romanticize a one-party police state that impoverishes and represses people, but unfortunately it seems a lot of them do.”
In a March 2023 email exchange (Pg. 123, 00044), Dyer said “In the long run only free and fair elections can bring the change that Cuba needs and the Communist Party has shown no sign of allowing that to happen.”
When an anonymous individual offered to put Dyer in touch with Cubans in Canada who support the Cuban government, Dyer never replied (Pg. 157, 00044).
Denial of US blockade as main reason for Cuban people’s suffering
Dyer began a March 2023 email exchange (Pg. 29, 00043) saying that the 60 plus-year long US blockade on Cuba was “extraneous matters that have nothing to do with the case at hand.” The case in hand being a March 6 article: “As holidaying Canadians return to Cuba, Cubans themselves are fleeing in record numbers”. That article wildly claimed the existence of a joint Cuban-Nicaraguan plan to make money off of people leaving Cuba to go to the West without any tangible proof. It included a claim from Cuban migration ‘expert’ Jorge Duany, of people leaving being driven by “a combination of factors, including political repression, a failing economy and ‘health issues, especially during the pandemic in the last few years.’"
In reality, health struggles were driven by lack of access to key medical supplies because of the US blockade, while economic struggles were driven by further US sanctions on Cuba from 2017 on, by both Biden and Trump. Even Oxfam says the Cuban people would benefit immensely, both economically and health wise, from the lifting of the US blockade on Cuba. The falsity of ‘political repression’ claims is showcased by TCF Contributing Editor Arnold August’s December 23, 2021 article detailing the Cuban people’s active opposition to regime change activists in Cuba.
Dyer’s choice to not mention the US blockade on Cuba is an ideological one, proven by his email comment:
“the Cuban Communist Party has rigidly pursued an economic model that has led to national impoverishment in every instance where it has been applied, from Albania to Zimbabwe, with or without sanctions.”
TCF Contributing Editor Arnold August noted, “The 1960 blockade has as its explicit goal, ‘denying money and supplies to Cuba, to decrease monetary and real wages, to bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow of government.’” August continued, “The blockade is multidimensional and includes economic and cultural warfare, involving ideological, political and artistic assault, as well as the most obvious bilateral economic and extraterritorial restrictions (involving third countries that would like to trade with Cuba.)”
The economic and extraterritorial restrictions could be seen very bluntly during 2021 for example, when Cuba couldn’t get syringes needed to give citizens their shot of the Cuban Abdala vaccine because of the US blockade. As of February 2022, in a Geopolitical Economy Report article, Ben Norton noted Cuba’s estimation that the blockade had “cost its economy $144.41 billion.”
Dyer went further by inferring that support of some nations over the course of the US blockade on Cuba cancelled out the blockade’s effects. Dyer said:
“the last 60 years of Cuban history also included 30 years of generous subsidies and assistance from the world's other superpower, the Soviet Union, and then a further 15 years with oil-rich Venezuela acting the role of Cuba's sugar daddy. Both governments only stopped supporting Cuba because their own economies collapsed as a result of trying to implement similar policies.”
The Soviet Union’s support was indeed valuable for Cuba, but that support ended in 1991, while Venezuela’s support after Hugo Chavez came to power was helpful, but couldn’t compare to the economic support offered by the Soviet Union given its sheer economic power during its existence. Venezuelan support was limited not by an economic model, but rather US sanctions targeting the Venezuelan economy. As an ardent anti-communist ideologue, Dyer consistently blames socialist nations, whether Cuba or Venezuela, for having economic struggles when under heavy US sanctions, and does so throughout other email exchanges in the internal emails obtained by The Canada Files.
Dyer in opposition to Cuban sovereignty
When an anti-communist Cuban Canadian wrote to Dyer thanking him for the March 6 article (Pg. 127-128, 00044), they said “I pray that someday with the help of Canada, we will be able to overthrow the government”. Dyer thanked the person for the email, indicating no issue with the individual’s hope that Canada would help overthrow the Cuban government, complaining about Canadians who support Cuba, saying that “It is refreshing to hear from someone who knows better.”
Dyer has consistent friendly exchanges with Cuban Canadian anti-communists who want to violate Cuba’s sovereignty by engineering regime change in Cuba, but shows no interest in speaking to Cuban Canadians who support Cuba and its right to sovereignty.
Dyer views Cuba as needing change, but rather than changes which could be made after the US blockade on Cuba is lifted, such as ending any reliance on remittances by developing new industries with easy access to technology and materials, Dyer sees change magically occurring through “free and fair” elections (Pg. 123, 00044). In reality, this means Dyer wants the establishment of a ‘democratic’ capitalist government which would be just as servile as Batista’s dictatorship was to the West.
Documents
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Aidan Jonah is the Editor-in-Chief of The Canada Files, a socialist, anti-imperialist news outlet founded in 2019. Jonah has broken numerous stories, including how the Canadian Armed Forces trained neo-Nazi "journalist" Roman Protasevich while he was with the Azov Battalion, and how a CIA front group (the NED) funded the group (URAP) which drove the "Uyghur genocide" vote in parliament to pass in February 2021. Jonah recently wrote a report for the 48th session of the UN Human Rights Council, held in September 2021.
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