OTTAWA—At a state dinner in Havana, the red carpet will be out to welcome Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his wife, Sophie Grégoire Trudeau, to Cuba on Tuesday.

Trudeau goes to Havana 40 years after his father became the first leader of a NATO country to visit post-revolutionary Cuba. But the Liberal government is not playing up the return of a Trudeau son to Cuban shores as a renewal of personal ties forged in 1976 between his father, Pierre Elliott Trudeau, and the Castro administration.

Instead, Canadian government officials are casting Justin Trudeau’s trip as a diplomatic mission to reinforce trade links, to continue Ottawa’s “respectful engagement” with Cuba and to deliver a human rights message.

Two government officials who briefed reporters on condition of anonymity acknowledged “clearly the name of Trudeau is known in Cuba, clearly this is a significant factor.” But one official said the significance of the Trudeau family’s history there “is more for the Cubans.”

“This is first and foremost an opportunity for the government of Canada to exchange with Cuba,” he said.

The officials said Trudeau’s message on the ground will include a display of support for civil society groups in Havana who defend human rights, for “peaceful pluralism, respect for diversity and in particular, the rights of women and girls and LGBTQ” people. They didn’t utter the word democracy, saying, “Whether it’s specific to election and multi-party elections, I think he’ll talk about the importance of strong governance and structures.”

It is only the third time a Canadian prime minister has visited Cuba. Jean Chrétien visited briefly in 1998.

But many Cuban observers say Trudeau’s trip comes at an important political moment with the election of Donald Trump to the White House. Trump has sent mixed signals on Cuba.

Early in the campaign he was “fine” with U.S. President Barack Obama’s reset in 2014 of American relations with Cuba. By the end of it, Trump told supporters in Miami he would keep the embargo in place and close the recently reopened U.S. Embassy in Havana. In the wake of Trump’s election, Cuba relaunches military exercises this week, although the BBC reports the exercises were scheduled in any event.

Some observers say it’s high time Canada got back into the game to assert Canadian business interests there, given the rising American business interest in seeing the embargo formally lifted.

Canadian officials deny Trump’s election changed anything, or that Ottawa has already lost ground and is playing catch-up: “The best way to stay on the ground is to keep on having a strong relationship with Cuba no matter who the U.S. president was,” said one. “It has nothing to do with the presidential election. We will continue to be present in Cuba and we will continue to deepen our cultural and our economic ties.

Lloyd Axworthy, who travelled to Cuba as minister of external affairs in 1997, said Canada has taken a lot of flak for engaging with the Castro regime. Madeleine Albright, then U.S. secretary of state, “would say to me, ‘Why are you talking to that man?’” he said in an interview.

But Axworthy says there was an “enormous benefit payoff” to engagement. “When it came to securing our seat on the (UN) Security Council in ’99, we just got virtually every Caribbean and Latin America vote,” said Axworthy.

Trent University historian Robert Wright said the Trudeau government is right to frame the visit as focused on trade.

“I think this trip is designed to be short and sharp, to have official talks, to the extent that’s possible in a short time frame, to shore up in a short the established Canadian trade relationship particularly vis-à-vis the entry of the Americans into that market presuming Donald Trump is not going to unwind it.”

“I don’t think Justin Trudeau has anything to gain from the optics of being close to the Cubans or establishing a warm relationship in the way that his father did. His father was pilloried for finding that he had a warm attraction to Castro and vice versa.”

Trudeau will meet with President Raúl Castro, attend the state dinner in his and his wife Sophie’s honour, and meet with civil society groups, University of Havana students and Canadian business people there.

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A visit with Fidel Castro is likely if the old leader, frail at 90, is in good enough health, and Canadian officials said they are prepared to shift the schedule to make it possible.

The Cuba trip is the first stop on a three-country trip which will see the prime minister travel to Argentina then on to Peru for the meeting of Asia-Pacific leaders.

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