The goal is to get the oppressive communist regime of cuba to collapse,
And replace it with an oppressive capitalist regime willing to sell the country to American capital, don't forget that part. We already fucking know what America bringing "democracy" means, and nobody with any decency should be cooperating with that. Clearly Canada's goal is to not (or at least look like they won't) let America starve Cuba to death.
why are western governments pussy footing around with awful regimes that kill their own citizens?
As opposed to western governments that kill other people's citizens?
Except they won't, because their masters don't want them to. If you think this is a spine problem then consider this: Would state governments capitulate so readily if Trump was a leftwing authoritarian promising to abolish private property? My point applies as much to state legislatures as it does to Congress, because while MAGA is a Republican project fascism is bipartisan.
Except it's not, because that's not its purpose. The point of Congress is to pass laws for the good of the rich; expecting it to help average people without a (optionally metaphorical) gun to their head completely misunderstands American politics.
I don't know for sure about this specific case, but as the article states,
President Claudia Sheinbaum has been under mounting pressure from Washington to intensify her offensive against drug cartels blamed for producing and smuggling drugs, particularly the synthetic opioid fentanyl, across the border to the U.S.
That a high-profile military operation likely to lead to random violence and instability is happening two months after the Venezuela debacle and Trump threatening to bomb Mexico could be a coincidence, but it definitely doesn't have to be, and either way the fact of US pressure doesn't change.
The idea is that the big corrupt polluters would cease to exist and be replaced with smaller and weaker corrupt polluters. The only reason we haven't hit net zero yet is corporate lobbying; remove that and you're halfway there.
I am not sure how another economic system will fix this.
Other economic systems have assholes, true, but capitalism is uniquely myopic in this respect. A socialist system would take away the polluters' power to hinder change. There's a reason (still capitalist to be fair) China is a world leader in renewable energy, and that's because they don't have rich and powerful lobbies forcing fossil fuels down people's throats.
But I would argue setting the incentives right, can mitigate damage
Until capitalists use their wealth and power to remove those incentives, which leads us back to "end capitalism." This is the fundamental problem with reformism; under capitalism there will naturally be mechanisms for resisting and winding back said reform, making "nicer" versions of it mere interludes interrupting the crushing boot of exploitation and destruction we all know and love.
That the US shouldn't pressure Mexico to do this or that to the cartels (which is what happened here), but also more generally that the unilateral action threatened by Trump and pursued by past administrations throughout the drug war shouldn't have happened and shouldn't happen.
Yes, leave them to the people who actually have to live with the consequences of their existence; they're more likely to do actually effective things rather than drop a bomb and make everything worse. If you want to do something about some of the most evil people on the planet, go bomb Congress or Wall Street (the White House will do in a pinch).
*All of the West. Most of the world doesn't give a rat's ass about Trump, at least not any more than other US presidents. It's not like America was exactly peaceful when Biden or gasp Obama was president.
And replace it with an oppressive capitalist regime willing to sell the country to American capital, don't forget that part. We already fucking know what America bringing "democracy" means, and nobody with any decency should be cooperating with that. Clearly Canada's goal is to not (or at least look like they won't) let America starve Cuba to death.
As opposed to western governments that kill other people's citizens?