While Canadians in Cuba are waiting for flights home as an energy crisis worsens in the nation amid a U.S. oil blockade, those who send aid are struggling to do so.

Cuba warned international airlines on Feb. 9 that aviation fuel would no longer be available on the island, beginning Feb. 10, in the latest sign of fast-worsening conditions as the United States moves to cut off the communist-run nation’s oil supply.

Major Canadian airlines, including Air Canada, WestJet and Air Transat, have already suspended service to Cuba. All three airlines have confirmed they plan to bring travellers back home to Canada.

Calgary-based WestJet says its decision to wind down winter operations will affect WestJet, Sunwing Vacations, WestJet Vacations, and Vacances WestJet Quebec.

Air Canada has said its decision to cancel service to Cuba comes after “following advisories issued by governments regarding the unreliability of the aviation fuel supply at Cuban airports.”

Venezuela has historically been a major supplier of oil to Cuba but in early 2026, ceased those oil exports as a result of recent geopolitical turmoil after it was taken over by the United States.

The Trump administration is cutting Cuba off from using its traditional fuel sources in an effort to put pressure on the island nation off the coast of Florida, which has been under strict economic sanctions imposed by the U.S. government for decades.

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Air Canada suspends flights to Cuba amid fuel shortage

Amid the efforts to get Canadians out, those who provide charitable aid say they are now struggling to send that in.

“The Cuban people are devastated,” said Jennifer Raymer, the director of Together for Cuba. “They rely on tourists coming down there, obviously, for employment and taxi services and hotels and food and, you know, Canadians are known to bring aid.”

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The Ontario-based aid agency sends 600 large duffle bags, weighing about 14,000 kg, full of medicine, surgical supplies and other medical aid to Cuba each year.

“I knew that as soon as this all came down — that all the airlines would stop — we would be stuck here in Canada without being able to get the aid in. I haven’t slept since yesterday.”

Halting shipments will make life even more difficult in the impoverished island nation.

“The Cuban people are going to have an even harder struggle. A lot of our medical bags include prescription medication for heart and diabetes and different things, and as well as surgical bags. These bags are life-saving,” Raymer said.

As the airlines wind down their operations to Cuba, Raymer was hoping one of them would agree to take the medical supplies on one of the empty flights being sent to Cuba to evacuate the more than 7,000 stranded Canadian tourists.

So far, none have stepped up.

“It means that people can’t have surgeries or get the medications that they need. There are surgical packs in there that people are waiting for, and now they’re sitting in London, Ont.,” Raymer said.

“We’re struggling to find a way to get them out.”

NDP interim leader Don Davies said Tuesday that Canada must provide immediate support to Cuba in the face of “escalating aggression” from the Trump administration.

“Recent U.S. actions are provoking a severe humanitarian crisis and disrupting travel across the region, leaving Canadians stranded as airlines suspend flights,” Davies said in a statement.

“By threatening tariffs on any third country that transports fuel to the island, the Trump administration is expanding U.S. economic coercion in dangerous new ways.”

Davies argued that Prime Minister Mark Carney has remained “silent” in the face of Trump’s aggression towards Cuba.

“Canada must stand with the Cuban people and resist the Trump administration’s aggression clearly and directly. This is a defining test of principle and we must not fail it,” he said.

–with files from The Canadian Press

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Norwegian biathlete Sturla Holm Laegreid admitted live on television to cheating on his now ex-girlfriend, shortly after winning a bronze medal at the Winter Olympics, in the hopes of regaining her affection.

The 28-year-old said an affair he had three months ago was his “biggest mistake.”

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He said it had been the worst week of his life since telling his ex-girlfriend, who he dated for six months about his infidelity, and that he hoped admitting to his mistake on television would show her how sorry he is.

“There’s someone I wanted to share it with who might not be watching,” he told Norway’s state broadcaster, NRK.

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“Six months ago, I met the love of my life — the most beautiful and kindest person in the world. Three months ago, I made my biggest mistake and cheated on her,” he said.

“I had the gold medal in life, and I am sure there are many people who will see things differently, but I only have eyes for her,” he continued.

“Sport has come second these last few days. Yes, I wish I could share this with her,” Laegreid added.

In a later interview, he told Norwegian newspaper VG that the “only way to solve it is to tell everything and put everything on the table, and hope that she can still love me.”

“I’ve done that for her, and now for the whole world. I have nothing to lose,” he said. “I want to be a good role model, but I have to admit when I make mistakes.”

Laegreid is a seven-time world champion biathlete, a sport that combines cross-country skiing and rifle shooting. His bronze medal win follows a gold in the relay at the 2022 Games.

During a press conference after his admission, he told reporters he hoped he hadn’t ruined fellow teammate and gold medallist Johan-Olav Botn’s day.

“I don’t know if it was the right choice or not, but it was the choice I made,” he said.

“I made the choice to tell the world what I did so maybe there’s a chance she will see what she really means to me — maybe not, but I don’t want to think I didn’t try everything to get her back,” he told reporters.

“I don’t want to steal the show. I hope this is just like a day-or-two thing. Then you are an Olympic gold medallist forever.”

Five-time Olympic champion Johannes Thingnes Bøe, a former teammate of Laegreid and now an expert correspondent at NRK, questioned the timing of Laegreid’s admission.

“It came as a complete surprise. His action was wrong — we saw a repentant lad standing there. Unfortunately, the time, place and timing are all wrong,” Boe said.

It’s unclear if Laegreid’s ex-girlfriend heard his on-screen mea culpa.

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The suspension of Air Canada flights to Cuba after the country warned airlines of a fuel shortage marks the latest blow for the island’s economy amid increased pressure from the Trump administration.

Cuba had been weathering economic hardship before U.S. President Donald Trump effectively cut off oil shipments to the island by blockading its chief supplier, Venezuela, and threatening tariffs on any country that stepped in to fill the void.

After the U.S. captured Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in early January, Trump predicted Cuba’s government was “ready to fall” next.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio told senators at a hearing late last month that “we would love to see a change” in the regime, but added the U.S. wouldn’t “make” that change.

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Rubio says he’d ‘love to see’ regime change in Cuba during Senate testimony

The White House has labelled Cuba “an unusual and extraordinary threat” to the U.S. due to the communist nation’s alliances with Russia, China and Iran.

Last week, Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel said his government is willing to enter negotiations with the Trump administration that could ease some of the economic pain. Whether that means the fall of the Cuban government is an open question.

“We may be reaching a breaking point,” said Max Cameron, a political science professor at the University of British Columbia who studies Latin America.

Cuba has been facing fuel shortages for years, and particularly since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, as Venezuela’s state oil company PDVSA has reduced exports in order to avoid fuel scarcity at home.

Other suppliers like Russia and Mexico have also reduced oil shipments, which the Cuban government has blamed on new U.S. sanctions imposed during Trump’s first term and later by former U.S. president Joe Biden.

The shortages have led to blackouts of the island’s fuel-powered electrical grid. In 2024, the entire population of over 10 million people was plunged into darkness when the grid ran out of fuel.

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Cubans have also faced food and medicine shortages in recent years that have been exacerbated by hurricanes disrupting shipments of essential goods.

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Trump’s Venezuelan oil blockade, and his Jan. 29 order that countries will face tariffs if they supply oil to Cuba, has further compounded the pain the country is facing.

Diaz-Canel has imposed emergency measures including shorter workweeks and school days, limited transport between provinces and fuel rationing for essential services.

“I know we are going to live through difficult times. But we will overcome them together, with creative resilience,” he said during a rare press conference on Feb. 5 where he told residents they must “sacrifice” and “resist.”

Mark Entwistle, who served as Canada’s ambassador to Cuba from 1993 to 1997, said Trump’s pressure campaign on Cuba also puts countries like Canada in a “vice grip.”

“The reality is that we need to manage and renegotiate (the Canada-U.S.-Mexico Agreement on free trade),” he said in an interview.

“The Canadian government … needs to manage the U.S. relationship in a smart-minded way, (but at the same time) nobody wants to see a fellow country of the Americas be bullied and crushed and potentially fall into chaos.”

Entwistle said the federal government will also need to ensure the safety and security of thousands of Canadians in Cuba.

Global Affairs Canada says it is aware of more than 7,200 Canadians in Cuba and is providing consular assistance to anyone who requests it.

It also pointed to the government’s travel advisory for Cuba, which was upgraded Feb. 3 to warn travellers to “exercise a high degree of caution,” citing worsening power outages and shortages of basic necessities.

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Canadians have long been the top market for Cuba’s lucrative tourism industry, which once generated $3 billion annually but has struggled to return to pre-pandemic levels. Many resorts have been forced to close or reduce their bookings because of the fuel and supply shortages.

Last year, around 754,000 Canadians visited the island, a 12-per cent drop from the year before and well below the 1.3 million pre-pandemic annual average, according to Cuba’s national statistics agency ONEI.

The number still outpaces other top markets like Russia and even Cuban nationals visiting from the U.S., and even exceeds the combined number of visitors from several other countries.

Pedro Monreal, a Cuban economist, said on X this week that Cuba’s tourism industry has become increasingly reliant on Canadian visitors, and that the recent drop-off has created a “pneumonia” across the sector.

The question of who’s to blame for Cuba’s economic crisis has led to finger-pointing between the Cuban government and the United States.

The U.S. has had an economic embargo on Cuba since the early 1960s, shortly after Fidel Castro’s socialist revolution in 1959. That embargo was codified into law in the 1990s, and has been relaxed and strengthened at various points since then.

A period of renewed U.S.-Cuba relations under the Obama administration came to an end when Trump took over the White House in 2017, an approach that continued under Biden.

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‘Why doesn’t Trump use his oil?,’ Cubans ask as US cuts off Venezuelan oil

Díaz-Canel said last week that U.S. sanctions have cost the country over $7.5 billion between March 2024 and February 2025, and called the “energy blockade” enacted by Trump a “psychological war.”

Rubio, the son of Cuban immigrants with deep ties to Miami’s Cuban community, told the U.S. Senate foreign relations committee on Jan. 28 that Cuba’s economic problems are the fault of the government’s decades of mismanagement.

“The suffering in the rural areas of Cuba are acute and they’re deep, and it’s not because of the embargo. It’s because they don’t know how to run an economy,” he said.

“How is it the fault of the U.S. embargo that Cuba, one of the world’s largest sugar producers, now imports sugar? Because no sector of their society works. It’s frozen and it’s broken.”

Entwistle and Cameron said both sides are partially responsible for the current situation. They said Cuba’s investments in health care and social services, while laudable, came at the expense of infrastructure that has been failing for decades.

The U.S. embargo, meanwhile, has blocked foreign investment and made sourcing goods difficult, though countries unfriendly to the U.S. like Russia, China and Venezuela have often stepped in to help.

The embargo has also, in the eyes of many experts and researchers, aimed to provoke regime change and force Cuba away from communism.

Although Entwistle said Cubans are “exhausted” by the worsening economic crisis and “would love to see a change in government,” he added the pressure from the U.S. is fueling Cuban nationalism and “anti-Americanism.”

“If there is a view in Washington that all Cubans on the island are waiting for them to come, or that Cubans will endure all suffering so that there can be a change in government — suffering even provoked by the U.S. government itself — that is an incorrect assessment,” he said.

Cameron added that a fall of the regime in Cuba could spark a power vacuum and civil strife that may create a new security crisis for the U.S. and the wider region.

“You don’t want to turn Cuba into another Haiti,” he said.