Global Affairs Canada (GAC) used the afternoon of 28 February 2026 to push two rare ‘Avoid All Travel’ updates for Iran and Iraq onto Travel.gc.ca, the federal travel-advice portal. The simultaneous notices – timestamped 14:08 ET for Iran and 16:30 ET for Iraq – cite “ongoing military strikes, air-space closures and rapidly deteriorating regional security” and warn that Canadian consular assistance on the ground is now “extremely limited.” The Iran bulletin tells Canadians already in the country to shelter in hardened structures, register with the Registration of Canadians Abroad service and prepare documentation in case overland evacuation routes to Türkiye, Armenia or Turkmenistan briefly open. It also reminds dual Canadian-Iranian citizens that they may be forced to use an Iranian passport to exit – and that holding dual citizenship can itself trigger detention under Iranian law. The Iraq advisory, meanwhile, bluntly states that all Iraqi airspace is closed and urges Canadians in the Kurdistan Region who deem over-land departure the “least-risk option” to head for the Ibrahim Khalil crossing with Türkiye, fully aware that “there are no risk-free options for leaving Iraq.” Both pages expand on threats from drone and missile debris, terrorist activity, unexploded ordnance and ad-hoc border closures. Although travel advisories do not carry legal force, they drive commercial-insurance coverage, employer duty-of-care obligations and the trigger clauses of many corporate travel-risk programmes. Canadian multinationals with personnel or contractors in the Middle East must now revisit evacuation plans, review ‘war-risk’ insurance riders and confirm whether their policies exclude travel in locations under a Government of Canada Level 4 warning. Mobility managers are also counselling inbound Iraqi and Iranian assignees whose family members had hoped to visit Canada this spring that visa processing and flight availability will likely be disrupted for weeks. With the new warnings, Canada joins the United States, United Kingdom and Australia in issuing maximum-level advisories for both countries – a rare alignment that underscores how quickly the regional security picture has worsened and how seriously Ottawa views the risk to Canadian lives and corporate operations abroad.
Source: Travel.gc.ca
