The Hotel Nacional in Havana, one of the places where the so-called “Havana Syndrome” is alleged to have occurred. Photo by Juggler100/Wikimedia Commons.

On September 26, the Globe and Mail revealed that Canadian diplomats in Havana were spying on Cubans in 2016 and 2018, around the time of alleged “sonic attacks” on US and allied intelligence agents in the Cuban capital. As part of these spying operations, Canadian diplomats used satellite equipment that had been illegally smuggled into Cuba by the US government. Such operations appear to violate the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, which “requires diplomats to respect the laws of countries in which they operate.” They also form part of a longer Canadian history of supporting US espionage in Cuba, dating back to the early 1960s.

Facing a lawsuit by Canadian diplomats allegedly affected by “sonic attacks” in Havana, the Canadian government has invoked Section 38 of the Canada Evidence Act, which “restricts disclosure of matters that could harm national security, national defence or international relations,” to prevent the release of information about clandestine Canadian operations in Cuba on behalf of the US government.

Globe and Mail journalist Robert Fife writes that adverse health symptoms experienced by US and Canadian spies and diplomats in Havana from 2016 to 2018 were caused by “alleged sonic attacks linked to Russia.” There is no evidence, however, that foreign intelligence agencies are to blame for the so-called “Havana Syndrome” symptoms, which include “headaches, dizziness, blurred vision, tinnitus [and] vertigo.” The US government itself has rejected the involvement of geopolitical adversaries in the incidents. A 2023 analysis by the US Intelligence Community found that “preexisting conditions, conventional illnesses and environmental factors” were likely to blame for the neurological symptoms experienced by US and Canadian officials in Havana. A 2025 study later asserted that it was “very unlikely” that any foreign power deployed “a novel weapon or prototype device to harm even a subset” of affected individuals.

The first Donald Trump administration used these alleged “sonic attacks” to justify closing its Havana embassy in 2017, just two years after Trump’s predecessor, Barack Obama, had reopened it. Trump then tightened the already debilitating and flagrantly illegal US blockade of Cuba to unprecedented levels of cruelty, imposing 243 new economic sanctions as part of his “maximum pressure campaign” (which Trump’s successor Joe Biden continued). Washington’s efforts to suffocate the........

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