Earlier this month, The Girls Guides of Canada, the Canadian equivalent of the Girl Scouts of America, hit the pause button on scheduling trips to the U.S. as a form of protest against President Trump and his infamous travel ban. Now, Canada’s largest school board is putting a halt to scheduling any trips that take their children to the United States out of fears that one or more of them might be turned back at the border due to travel restrictions enacted by President Donald Trump and border control.
The Toronto District School Board has decided that no new field trips will be planned to the U.S. in the near future, and any trips already planned there will be canceled if Trump’s executive order is fully implemented. In the future, schools have announced that if one child is prevented from crossing the border the entire group will return home:
“We just can’t have trips going across the border and a student for no legitimate reason being denied entry to the U.S. We’re obviously not going to leave that student and continue on,” said Ryan Bird, a spokesman for the board.
In all, the halted trips engulf a group that includes over 246,000 students and 584 schools. The massive cancellations will equate to roughly a few dozen trips across the border a year, of which, obviously, results in tourist money the U.S. will no longer receive. As for the children that will miss out on all the fun, the hope is they learn at a young age what equality and inclusion means to those who share Canadian values:
“It is my hope that our students, staff and parents will understand and support this difficult decision,” Malloy, the board’s director of education, said in a statement. “We feel it strikes a balance between our equity and inclusion commitments as a school board, while not cancelling already-approved trips for which a financial loss would be incurred.”
In short, Trump’s travel ban will have a real effect on the dollars flowing into the U.S. from one of its most important allies. Canadian PM Justin Trudeau previously declined to weigh in on Trump’s stance (at least, as far as a “lecture” is concerned) on immigration, but his country will be speaking with its wallet. And that may have a powerful effect in the long run.