Canada Will Offer Healthcare To Critically Ill Children Affected By Trump’s Muslim Ban

Canada hopes to provide healthcare to a group of severely ill children denied treatment in the United States by President Trump's Muslim ban, the CBC reported on Friday.

Ontario Minister of Health and Long-term Care Eric Hoskins said on Friday that Canada's government was made aware that "a small number of children" who had attempted the enter the United States for vital medical procedures were being turned away by President Trump's executive order. "Given that this is a critical time for these ill children, our ministry and Ontario's specialized children's hospitals, which provide best-in-the-world care, feel the responsibility to act quickly," he said.

Hoskins said that the provincial government was coordinating with pediatric hospitals in the United States who had asked for help. "It speaks to the level of talent that exists as well that these individuals — the medical specialists and surgeons in the United States — when they realize that these children and infants weren't able to receive the care that they needed in the United States, they immediately looked to Canada and the Hospital for Sick Children for help," he said.

Canada's health ministry is working the hospitals such as Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children to determine a plan. The surgeries will not supplant planned treatments for any Canadian child.

"Canada is a country that has always looked into ways it could reach out and support vulnerable people around the world," Hoskins said. "We're still in the early stages, but we felt, and I felt — particularly in light of the occurrences in the past week in this country, in Quebec — that Canadians and Ontarians would feel comfortable and confident in expressing our openness, our willingness, our generosity to consider receiving children, infants — some as young as four months old — that without the surgery would die."

Canada's Liberal government announced this week that despite Trump's ban on immigration from seven Muslim-majority countries, the country would not lift the country's cap on refugees, or suspend the Safe Country Agreement that views asylum-seekers safe in both Canada and the United States.