Canadian schools grapple with cancelling cross-border trips amid US travel ban concerns
Posted February 26, 2017 6:56 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) – Schools across Canada are grappling with the uncertainty of US travel restrictions and how upcoming student trips across the border might be affected.
A travel ban instituted by President Donald Trump on citizens from seven Muslim-majority countries and Syrian refugees may be on hold as it works its way through the justice system, but Canadian schools are still concerned with how foreign-born students will be treated at the border.
The Sooke School District in British Columbia, which is home to some refugees, will debate the issue at a board meeting later this week.
Superintendent Jim Cambridge says safety is a primary concern, but so is fairness to students who may be discriminated against or left behind at the border.
“It’s very conceivable since we have a few students from there, that the whole trip could be planned and go and those students could be affected. I guess that’s what the board needs to wrestle with, it’s more of the ethical decision about whether some trips can go and some can’t, or if they all can’t, or all can,” explains Cambridge.
The Pembina Trails School Division in Winnipeg cancelled a trip after a track team was concerned when the travel ban was imposed that some of their peers would be left behind.
Division Superintendent Ted Fransen says he doesn’t think a district-wide rule to cancel school trips is necessary.
“I just can’t imagine that we would get a request from a school principal to approve a field trip to the United States where students in the group wouldn’t be allowed to go. I can’t picture it,” says Fransen.
He says while the board hasn’t enacted rules in response to the US travel ban, students and teachers in his district value inclusivity and wouldn’t consider going on a trip that wasn’t available to everyone.
