Surrey schools putting U.S. field trips on hold amid trade war
Social Sharing
There are disappointed students, anxious parents and cautious school officials in at least two Canadian school districts that have suspended or cancelled trips over political uncertainty in the United States.
British Columbia's largest school district in Surrey has put all field trips down south on hold to prevent any "negative experiences at the border," while New Brunswick's largest French school district abruptly cancelled a high school band trip as a "precautionary decision."
Mark Pearmain, Surrey's district superintendent, said the city is "diverse" with many students from different backgrounds, including some who may not be Canadian citizens.
Largest school district in B.C cancels public school field trips to the U.S
16 hours ago
Duration 1:56
B.C.'s largest school district has hit pause on any more public school field trips to the US. The move by Surrey comes amid mounting security concerns at the border. Our Jon Hernandez spoke with students and immigration experts who support the decision.
"Some of them might be here because their parents are temporary foreign workers, and it's a recognition that we just always want to make sure that our staff and our students are always safe," he said.
The district has about 40 to 60 international field trips each year, and about half of those go to the United States. Some of them are sports-related, while others are dance competitions or musical events.
He said they don't want to see a scenario where a student or a staff member experiences trouble at the border.
Pearmain said they're suggesting teachers look for opportunities to explore "our amazing country," Canada, including "beautiful British Columbia."
Surrey Schools' decision to cancel U.S. trips not sitting well with everyone
9 minutes ago
Duration 8:58
The Surrey school district's move to put student and staff trips to the U.S. on pause due to security concerns is being supported by some groups, but not everyone is on board. Shawn Gallacher, who ran Affinity Group Tours -- a company solely dedicated to organizing school tours and trips -- has worked with all the schools over his 38-year run. He says the experience for students is irreplaceable.
He said he's hopeful things will settle down in the future, and schools can go back to their previous practices.
Monique Boudreau, superintendent for the Francophone Sud School District, in Dieppe, N.B., said in a statement it made the "difficult decision" to suspend a planned trip to the United States this month for a high school orchestra from École L'Odyssée, a public school in Moncton.
Boudreau said the decision came "in the context of a complex and uncertain sociopolitical environment," followed by discussions with the Department of Education and Early Childhood Development.
She said they cancelled the trip after the department had indicated that it expected to receive guidelines concerning banning non-essential travel to the United States.
New Brunswick Premier Susan Holt told reporters last week that there wasn't a directive from the province to districts or to schools to stop travel to the United States.
"We are hearing about anxieties of travelling into the United States, but those decisions and the authority for those decisions lie with the schools and districts," she said.
Boudreau said it's no longer possible to reschedule the trip.
"The essential services required to carry out the travel plans — including transportation, accommodations, and planned activities — are no longer available, making it impossible for the trip to proceed," said Boudreau.
The district shares the disappointment felt by the students, their families, and the school staff, but they remain confident in their decision, she said.
Boudreau said the École L'Odyssée team is already exploring other ways to offer the band students an "equally meaningful experience" in Canada before the end of the school year.
Global Affairs Canada updated its advisory for those travelling to the United States last week, warning people that they may face "scrutiny" from border guards and there's a possibility of detention or that they could be denied entry.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
National Observer
42 minutes ago
- National Observer
‘Harper's dreams coming true': MPs slam Carney's fast-tracking plan
Prime Minister Mark Carney's new bill to fast-track major projects will have to rely on Conservative votes to pass, with all other parties expressing major reservations. The legislation would allow the federal government to conditionally approve projects it deems 'in the national interest' before an environmental or impact assessment or other regulatory processes take place. Both the NDP and Greens have spoken out against it, while Patrick Bonin, Bloc Québécois environment and climate change critic, called Carney's plan to fast-track major projects 'highly problematic' at a French-language press conference on Monday. The federal government is seeking to give itself 'superpowers' to accelerate projects and weaken environmental protections, Bonin said. Some of the factors used to evaluate whether a project is in the national interest are vague, and there's no obligation for the government to adhere to it, he added. Then, there is the question of sovereignty and whether provinces can say no to projects in their jurisdiction. Last week, Carney said projects need consensus from provinces to move forward, but the legislation doesn't spell that out, leaving room for potential overreach on provincial jurisdiction, Bonin said. The Building Canada Act is part of an omnibus bill that also includes action to remove federal barriers to interprovincial trade, which is less controversial than the changes to major project approvals. On Monday, the Bloc Québécois called on the federal government to split the omnibus bill into two separate bills so the issues can be studied in the relevant federal committees. The federal Conservatives have not confirmed whether they will support the bill — Leader Pierre Poilievre said caucus will discuss it on Wednesday. For the Conservatives, the question is not whether legislation is perfect, but whether it is better than the way things are, Poilievre said on Friday. 'That's what we'll be looking at as we study this newly-introduced bill over the next few days.' 'We would vote in favour of accelerating even one project,' Poilievre said, indicating that he wants to see new pipelines in particular. 'Once a project is on that list, it's not a question of if it's going to move forward, but how,' Alexandre Boulerice, NDP critic for environment and climate change, said. 'It's like Stephen Harper's dreams coming true." Last week, BC Premier David Eby said he will not support Alberta Premier Danielle Smith's vision of building a new oil pipeline to BC's north coast. Poilievre made it clear he doesn't think provinces should get veto power over nationally important projects. 'We need a pipeline to the Pacific, and if the prime minister says he's going to wait till everyone agrees, then nothing will get done, which is what has been happening for the last decade,' Poilievre said at a press conference at Parliament Hill on Monday. If the Conservatives support Bill C-5, the Liberals will have the votes they need to get it through the House of Commons. The NDP says its members will vote against the bill, with one MP calling the major projects section 'really dangerous.' 'Once a project is on that list, it's not a question of if it's going to move forward, but how,' Alexandre Boulerice, NDP critic for environment and climate change, said in a phone interview with Canada's National Observer. 'It's like Stephen Harper's dreams coming true.' He said the NDP is currently exploring possible options to block the bill, but any action would likely require cooperation with the Bloc Québécois. Either way, Boulerice doesn't see how the federal government can rush the bill through by July 1, given that there are less than two weeks left before the House rises for the summer. 'It's a really capitalist logic that what we need to do is to provide certainty to investors and companies,' Boulerice said. Green Party Leader Elizabeth May also criticized the proposed legislation in a June 9 press release. 'Bill C-5 gives the federal Cabinet sweeping discretion to fast-track projects while weakening Indigenous rights and environmental protections,' May's statement reads. 'This is the first time in 40 years that Canadian environmental assessment law has been written to serve political deals first and environmental responsibility second.' Factors for determining national interest 'carefully worded' The bill lists some factors the government may consider when deciding whether a project will be listed for fast-tracking, one of which is whether it will 'contribute to clean growth and to meeting Canada's objectives with respect to climate change.' Another factor is whether it will 'advance the interests of Indigenous peoples.' Boulerice said these are nothing more than broad slogans. Mark Winfield, a professor of environmental governance at York University, was of the same mind. 'These are attempts to cover off points of potential vulnerability,' he said in a phone interview with C anada's National Observer. The bill does not have a clear definition of 'clean growth,' he said, which creates huge loopholes for approving projects or employing technologies that many Canadians wouldn't consider 'clean.' 'The government has been very liberal in its definition of 'clean' to include things like CCUS [carbon capture, utilisation and storage], critical minerals, [and] nuclear,' Winfield said. The bill raises serious questions about how the federal government will reconcile Canada's climate change obligations with all the talk of potential pipeline and fossil fuel export projects at the same time as northern Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Ontario are going up in smoke, he added. 'Everybody thinks that it's an open door for pipelines, in fact, for oil and gas,' Boulerice said. 'It's not about solving the housing crisis with a big project of building millions of homes. It's about energy.' Carney has made repeated references to both clean and conventional energy, the latter of which refers to fossil fuels like oil and gas. Carney has referenced 'decarbonized' oil and used the Pathways Alliance's proposed multi-billion dollar carbon capture project as an example of projects that could be considered for fast-tracking. 'Oil is carbon. There's no such thing as decarbonized oil,' Angela Carter, an associate professor of political science at Memorial University of Newfoundland, said in a phone interview. 'We need to be very, very careful about this definition of clean growth. If it's a project that contributes to sustaining and growing oil production, well, that's not clean growth. It's very, very, very simple.' Bloc Québécois House Leader Christine Normandin said it's too early to say whether her party will support the bill. First, they want the government to respond to their request to split the bill into two parts, one for interprovincial trade and one for major projects. 'In a sense, this is taking what Stephen Harper tried to do with C-38 and putting it on steroids … The problem with trying to take shortcuts is it has a tendency to backfire and to make the underlying conflicts worse than ever,' Winfield said. 'Look what happened: Northern Gateway died, Energy East went nowhere, it took extraordinary steps to get Trans Mountain done.' The biggest challenge for Carney's government will likely be navigating Indigenous opposition and constitutional rights, said Michael Wernick, former clerk of the Privy Council. Indigenous Peoples have the most 'legal ability' to slow things down, he said, adding that it is not unsolvable for the Carney government but will be a key hurdle. Assembly of First Nations National Chief Cindy Woodhouse Nepinak voiced her concerns with the bill on Friday and called an emergency meeting on it this week. Onlookers and experts who care about climate are looking on with 'considerable uncertainty' because the bill could allow for massive progress to be made on an east-west electricity grid or fast-tracking renewable energy infrastructure, but that may not be the case, James Rowe, an associate professor of environmental studies at the University of Victoria, said. 'Given the political economy of Canada as the fourth largest oil producer in the world … it's more likely those real powerful forces are going to get their way — and projects that might otherwise have been stopped by regulatory processes and consultations … are going to get fast-tracked,' he said.
National Observer
42 minutes ago
- National Observer
Trans Mountain's financial nightmare offers lessons in the reality of pipelines
Every morning, David Huntley checks on the oil tanker traffic outside his home. He can see them cruise up Burrard Inlet from his living room window a few hundred metres above Westridge Marine Terminal, where the Trans Mountain pipeline ends. When I popped by for a visit on June 3, an Aframax called the Tyrrhenian Sea had just docked and was partly visible through a thicket of trees. Last time Huntley saw it here was April 20; since then, it has been to China and back. Huntley, 88, has penetrating green eyes and a shock of white hair. He's lived in this cluttered bungalow at the foot of Burnaby Mountain for 41 years. Tankers have been passing below his patio all that time, though it used to be no more than one a week. Now it's almost once a day — there were 25 in May; 28 in April; 30 in March. 'My job got a lot harder once they finished Trans Mountain,' he told me. Huntley's 'job' is to track the movements of every oil tanker loading up on Canada's West Coast. He doesn't rely on his eyes, but on satellites that track the tankers long after they've sailed out of sight. That data gets transmitted to a number of tanker-monitoring websites, like and which Huntley scours every morning and most nights. He's been doing this for 10 years — ever since he spotted a tanker sailing by without a tugboat — and keeps meticulous handwritten notes. These make it clear that well over half the bitumen piped through Trans Mountain is now going to Asia, mostly China. Huntley's no fan of all this. 'Global warming is causing destruction, injury and death,' he told me. 'Under other circumstances, those responsible would be charged, convicted and jailed.' But putting that little quibble aside, the view from Huntley's patio seems like an advertisement for the new pipelines so many in the oil patch are clamouring for. Tidewater, baby: Trans Mountain has both unleashed a production boost in Alberta and diversified the market, a prairie premier's dream. But is it? Just as Huntley needs satellites to comprehend the tanker's movements, to really understand what Trans Mountain is telling us about the need for new pipelines, you need to look closely at the numbers — in particular, the money. When you do that, the dream becomes a financial nightmare. Huntley, 88, uses websites that track the global movements of oil tankers to maintain his handwritten ledger on the origin and destination of every tanker that fills up with Trans Mountain bitumen. Photo by Arno Kopecky/Canada's National Observer Canadian taxpayers who own Trans Mountain face the prospect of billions in debt. The only real question is, how many billions will that be? writes Arno Kopecky ** 'Trans Mountain is definitely losing money,' says Tom Gunton, a professor of resource and environmental management at Simon Fraser University who has been following Trans Mountain closely for years. Not just a bit of money, either. According to Gunton's calculations, spelled out in a recent report he published for the International Institute for Sustainable Development, Canadian taxpayers stand to lose between $9 billion and $19 billion from Trans Mountain, putting it among the largest oil subsidies in the world. Most Canadians are well aware of how dramatically over-budget Trans Mountain became. From an initial estimate of $5.4 billion, the final price tag came in over $34 billion. Analysts have been asking ever since how the government expects to get that back. 'There's no way anyone will pay the full cost of this pipeline,' Rory Johnston, an energy researcher and founder of the Commodity Context newsletter, told CBC in April 2024, when construction was completed. 'You're going to need to take a haircut of at least 50 per cent of this pipeline.' So far, the government has avoided that haircut by not selling. We own the asset and the debt, as income from the project starts to trickle in. What the average voter may not appreciate, though, is just how meager that trickle is, and why: the oil companies who are now shipping their product on Trans Mountain were given a sweetheart deal based on that initial price estimate. Oil producers pay a per-barrel toll to pipeline companies. Just like Bell charging for data that passes through its cell towers, the tolls are how the pipeline company recovers its construction and operation costs, plus the return on investment. The toll rate is usually a function of the project's cost — at least that's how it works in the private sector. But Trans Mountain is a Crown corporation owned by taxpayers and built with political rather than economic imperatives in mind. Such was our government's zeal to make it operational that Trans Mountain locked in its customers' toll rates years before the project's full cost came into view. As a result, oil producers are paying just over $11 per barrel to use Trans Mountain. That's roughly half of what would be required just to break even, leaving the Canadian taxpayers who own Trans Mountain with the prospect of billions in debt. The only real question is, how many billions will that be? Close-up view of the Trans Alaskan Pipeline, viewpoint from Delta Junction Viewpoint along the Richardson Highway. Photo by Shutterstock 'There's nowhere else in the world where the taxpayers are subsidizing the transportation costs of the oil sector,' Gunton notes. 'It just doesn't make any sense. They're a profitable industry, and historically they paid for their own transportation to market, as they should. So Trans Mountain is unprecedented — unprecedented in building a project where half the capital costs are not even included in the rate base for determining tolls.' Astonishingly, the deal isn't even that great for oil producers. 'Even with the subsidized tolls on the pipeline, it actually costs more to ship on Trans Mountain over to China than it does shipping on Enbridge's system down to the Gulf,' Gunton says. That helps explain why the pipeline still isn't operating at capacity. One year after it started operating, the pipeline is just over 80 per cent full; the only companies using it are the ones who signed shipping contracts before construction began. Now those companies are trying to get the toll lowered further still — Trans Mountain and its clients are locked in a complex dispute currently before the Canada Energy Regulator (CER), though a decision in the years-long case isn't expected before 2026. In response to a query about whether the Crown corporation expects to recoup the $34.5 billion it spent on the project, and how long that could take based on current toll rates, a spokesperson for Trans Mountain wrote by email: 'The Trans Mountain pipeline system is a long-life asset. The tolls for service on the pipeline are approved by the CER and provide for a return (on) the invested capital over the life of the asset.' Perhaps worst of all, Trans Mountain has failed to alleviate the discount on Canadian heavy oil that was such a big reason for its construction: Alberta bitumen sells for less in American markets than American oil, and leaders in the oil patch along with prairie premiers have long claimed this is because Canadians only have one buyer. But the discount actually got worse in the months immediately after Trans Mountain started operating; one year later, it remains worse than it was in 2020. That's not because we need more pipelines. It's because bitumen is an inferior quality of oil, costing more to refine. Americans aren't alone in paying less for it. 'China is not going to pay a premium for oil over the US,' Gunton says, 'and if they do, then the Middle East is going to ship more oil there, and other producers will ship more oil to China to smooth out those prices. You do get short-term bottlenecks here and there, but over time the price of oil is essentially equalized in all the destination markets, because people move oil around by tanker to take advantage of these price differences. And by doing that, they smooth them out.' In the meantime, oil producers looking for ways to transport their product won't need a new pipeline any time soon. On top of Trans Mountain's spare capacity, Enbridge is about to add two new pipelines' worth of transport capacity to its existing grid, simply by improving efficiency. At an Investor Day presentation in March, Colin Gruendig, Enbridge's executive vice president and president of liquid pipelines, announced plans for one million additional barrels per day of capacity by 2035 — twice the Trans Mountain expansion's volume, in less time than TMX took to build. *** Granted, none of Enbridge's pipelines lead to an ocean. But even that Trans Mountain advantage may prove fleeting, with Chinese demand for oil set to begin dropping soon. China is leading the world's energy transition, with over half its vehicle sales already in EVs, and many of its neighbours are following suit. 'The Asian [oil] market is not going to grow,' Gunton says, adding that Canadian bitumen — which costs a lot to produce, and yet more to refine — must compete with cheap Middle Eastern oil for those dwindling Asian markets. 'Right now, the Middle East has about five million barrels of unused capacity just sitting there that they can turn on tomorrow, if they want, at very low cost. So, in this environment, I don't think any rational investor is going to bet on building a major new pipeline.' No businesses are either. For all the talk from premiers like Danielle Smith, there isn't a single proposal from a company that actually builds pipelines to do so today. So if the best-case scenario for a new pipeline is so bleak, why are so many in the oil patch clamouring for one? 'I think they see this as an opportunity to again get the government to subsidize transportation costs for them,' says Tom Gunton. 'Because the only way you can build a new pipeline is if the government significantly subsidizes it.' British Columbians, at least, can take some solace in the fact that our provincial government has vocally opposed any talk of building new oil pipelines to the West Coast (although the province does seem open to dredging Burrard Inlet to expand Trans Mountain's tanker capacity). But Carney is still playing footsie with the rest of Canada's premiers on this subject. And in the prime minister's eagerness to turn Canada into an 'energy superpower' by advancing major projects through Bill C-5 (the 'One Canadian Economy Act' now making its way through parliament), the oil patch clearly smells an opportunity — not just for more federal subsidies, but less regulation too. *** 'Any new pipeline project would require careful consideration and real provincial and federal legislative change,' wrote an Enbridge spokesperson in reply to my query about whether Canada's biggest pipeline company saw a business case for building a new pipeline anywhere in Canada right now. 'This includes identifying energy projects as being in the national interest, implementing globally competitive energy and carbon policies, simplifying regulation, reducing regulatory timelines and a robust Indigenous loan guarantee program.' Most of that answer is contained in two words — 'simplifying regulation' — which is exactly what the One Canadian Economy Act proposes to do. Unfortunately for this approach, it's already been tried. Under Stephen Harper's Conservative government, the approval process for pipelines and other major projects was dramatically streamlined, with environmental assessment and other regulations rolled into a one-stop shop called the Joint Review Panel. That JRP approved the Northern Gateway Pipeline proposal, as well as the Trans Mountain expansion, only to have both decisions overturned by a federal court. The Northern Gateway never recovered, in part because Indigenous opposition and the coastal environment made that project so much more tenuous. Trans Mountain only survived by scrambling to conduct the environmental assessment it hoped to skip (the JRP had initially decided against considering the environmental impacts of a seven-fold increase in tanker traffic; it never did consider climate impacts of the increased oil production). Ultimately, the supposed streamlining of the JRP wound up delaying construction instead, thus contributing to Trans Mountain's massive cost overruns. 'Harper was like, 'our regulatory system has too much red tape, we're not getting decisions fast enough, and we want to be an energy superpower,'' recalls Eugene Kung, a lawyer with West Coast Environmental Law who has been involved in court battles with both Northern Gateway and Trans Mountain. 'Tell me if that sounds familiar.'
Cision Canada
an hour ago
- Cision Canada
Fraser Institute News Release: AI can help mitigate shrinking labour force by increasing productivity of existing workers and adding new ones
VANCOUVER, BC, June 10, 2025 /CNW/ - As Canada's labour force shrinks due to aging and slowing rates of immigration, artificial intelligence (AI) can help by increasing the number of available workers and improving worker productivity, finds a new study published today by the Fraser Institute, an independent, non-partisan Canadian public policy think-tank. "While there's a common perception that AI will eventually lead to mass unemployment, it actually opens the door to the labour market for people who may have been on the outside looking in," said Morley Gunderson, professor emeritus of economics at the University of Toronto and author of Can AI Mitigate Our Labour Force Problems? For example, AI can facilitate more effective job-matching between employers and job seekers including retirees who want to return to work, students who want part-time jobs, and new immigrants. AI can also improve employment prospects for people with disabilities by equipping employees with assistive technologies (screen readers, speech recognition software, etc.) and helping make driverless vehicles, "smart" wheelchairs and other AI-powered resources more widely available. At the same time, AI can help increase productivity growth, which has stagnated in Canada. For example, AI can help connect small and dispersed geographical markets with larger commercial centres, facilitate trade (within Canada and internationally), help small firms grow, and increase the ability of scientists and engineers to develop innovations that fuel productivity growth. "Rather than unduly fearing AI, Canadians should welcome the promise of AI to increase our ability to produce goods and services and improve our living standards," said Steven Globerman, senior fellow at the Fraser Institute. The Fraser Institute is an independent Canadian public policy research and educational organization with offices in Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto, Montreal, and Halifax and ties to a global network of think-tanks in 87 countries. Its mission is to improve the quality of life for Canadians, their families and future generations by studying, measuring and broadly communicating the effects of government policies, entrepreneurship and choice on their well-being. To protect the Institute's independence, it does not accept grants from governments or contracts for research. Visit SOURCE The Fraser Institute
