30% Less Canadian tourists travel to North Dakota

0:00 Speaker 1 Sunday Morning with us today is Senator Kevin Kramer from the great state of North Dakota, which borders borders, you know, Canada, Alberta, and Ontario. Senator Kramer, tell us give us an update, what’s going on in Middle America, what’s going on on the border with Canada. Have we resolved the problem with the migrants coming in? You tell us, Senator.

0:29 Speaker 2 Yeah, No, I appreciate that, John.

0:30 Speaker 3 And first of all, North Kota is beautiful this We’ve had a banner weekend this weekend.

0:36 Speaker 2 Sunny skies, almost.

0:38 Speaker 3 No wind and about mid eighties and just love and life in North Dakota. But our neighbors to the north of US are a little bit anxious about things. Interestingly, John, you know, the business community is anxious about tariffs, but the the you know, the rank and file Canadian citizens, they’re upset about being referred to as the fifty first

0:59 state all the time because they rather like their sovereignty. But they love coming to the states. And for people from Winnipeg and Saskatchewan, for Regina and Manitoba and Alberta, over a million of them visit North Dakota every year. John, And you know North Dakota has only got about seven hundred and eighty thousand people, so a million visitors is

1:20 a big deal, and they’re they’re kind of offended these days. So our traffic from Canada is down at least thirty percent, which means thirty percent less people in the bars and hotels and restaurants and the shopping malls and.

1:33 Speaker 2 Fargo and Grant Fork’s and mine not and whatnot.

1:35 Speaker 3 So hopefully, hopefully we can get peace in the family again. As you know, I made a trip to Ottawa on Friday last week with four of my Democratic colleagues and met with Prime Minister Carney and Foreign Minister and On and Trade Minister Joe Lee. These are all friends of mine, several of the premieres around the country. Canada a friends

1:58 of mine. We need.

1:59 Speaker 3 We talked a lot about national security. By the way, John, I actually think national security is the gateway to further peace.

2:04 Speaker 2 I really do.

2:05 Speaker 3 I get the sense from from Prime Minister at Carney that the page turned and they want to they want to be more active in national security issues.

2:13 Speaker 1 Senator, you know the fact is that the Trudeau people and are they better than Trudeau? And now is the concern when the Canadian Huh, Canadians Tories or Republicans lost the election to the Trudeau people.

2:33 Speaker 3 Yeah, No, it’s a great question, John, and I would say that Mark Kearney to me, seems like a transformational prime minister. He’s certainly not Justin Trudeau. In fact, our trip last Friday to Ottawa was the first imagine this now, the first Senate delegation to visit a prime minister in Canada in five years, and I think that that tells

2:54 you a.

2:54 Speaker 2 Little bit about about Justin Trudeau.

2:57 Speaker 3 I mean, we have every few weeks of delegation going to you know, to the Middle East or going to Israel or going to one of the European countries, a meeting with the leaders and every continent.

3:08 Speaker 2 But it’s been five.

3:10 Speaker 3 Years since senators met with with the prime minister of our neighbor Canada. So I think there’s a lot of work to be done in the relationship, largely because of the previous administration up there. But we shouldn’t punish the current folks for that because I really do think Mark Carney’s you know what, he’s a lot like Donald Trump.

3:27 He’s a business guy. This is you know, he’s not a politician, he was the president of the Bank of Canada, he was a governor of the Bank of London. In fact, he’s more comfortable talking about deals and business than he is about politics and policy. So I actually think that, you know, that first meeting between the Prime Minister and

3:46 President Trump went went quite well. I understand that the Prime Minister called President Trump just yesterday or today and followed up on our visit wants to get back at the negotiating table. And I think all of that is very very good new and and I think we there’s reason to be optimistic about a deal with Canada.

4:04 Speaker 1 So we don’t have to worry that the Trudeau type people are in charge.

4:08 Speaker 2 I don’t I don’t worry about it all.

4:10 Speaker 3 In fact, I talked to the to my Conservative premieres pretty regularly, and I’ve just talked to Doug Ford last week. I talked to Danielle Smith up in Alberta, to Scott Moe and Saskatchewan, and while they’re all Conservative members, they’re pretty optimistic about this guy. They find him to be, you know, being pragmatic, reaching out. But remember the reason

4:30 he won was because he made Donald Trump in the United States, the adversary, but he’s really a lot more conservative than Trudeau and and and most of these other ministers as well. So I’m I’m I’m hopeful, I really am.

4:44 Speaker 1 Tell me, how are you doing with Doug Ford from Ontario, who’s I love the guy? And Danielle Smith from Alberta. They’re right your neighbors right up above.

4:56 Speaker 2 Yeah, they sure are. Yeah.

4:58 Speaker 3 So so let me tell you about dan First, Danielle Smith, to me, she makes you and me look like like left wingers. I’m sorry to say, but she is really conservative And the first time I met her, first thing she said to me was I want to restart the Keystone Excel pipeline.

5:14 Speaker 2 Can you help?

5:15 Speaker 3 I understand you’re an expert in that, And I said, well, I could write a book about the Keystone pipeline because I cited the first one through North Dakota and the Excel.

5:23 Speaker 2 They made a terrible route.

5:24 Speaker 3 But I said, I said, Premiere Smith, the problem you have is that Trans Canada has abandoned that project and so I don’t think that’s going anywhere.

5:32 Speaker 2 But I knew right away I was gonna love this person. Doug Ford.

5:36 Speaker 3 Now, speaking of people who remind me of Donald Trump. They’re practically the same person, you know. I mean they’re both business guys first, they have big personalities. Doug and I co hosted a big reception at the Library of Congress a couple of months ago for about two hundred and fifty Canadian and US business leaders, as well as

5:54 every premiere from Canada was there and their embassy staff. Doug is a deelmaker, extraordinary, big like I said, big personality, I just and and by the way, he’s very supportive of Prime Minister Carney. I think they all know that they lost that election somewhat because of the United States, but but they all want, you know, they’re all pulling

6:16 together now to try to make peace with the United States because, let’s, let’s face it, we’re stronger as a continent if Canada and the United States are completely arm and arm and our supply chain is so integrated, John, as you know, it’s our.

6:30 Speaker 2 Number one trading partner.

6:31 Speaker 3 So we really need to we really need to do better by the Canadians. However, if I could take any part of Canada as a fifty first state, I would love to have Danielle Smith be the governor of Alberta.

6:44 Speaker 2 That would be great by me.

6:46 Speaker 1 Understood, understood. How is the border situation? President Trump is very much concerned. I spoke to Tom Homan the borders are and he says, it’s it’s it’s that the northern border is one hundred ninety six percent. The northern border still needs a little bit of help.

7:04 Speaker 3 How are you doing, Yeah, we’re doing better, quite honestly. And what’s happening. It’s kind of an interesting phenomenon. Because of the problems at the southern border. A lot of the resources for the northern border had to go to the southern border, including personnel, and what that meant was that meant many of our legal crossings had they had

7:23 to shorten their hours of operation. While that makes it very difficult for commerce to go back and forth between the provinces and the States, and that was a problem, became very inconvenient for people traveling. Uh and then of course you just had much less patrol along the border.

7:40 Now that Tom and Christine Noelman, of course President Trump have the southern border pretty well under control, we’re getting some of those resources back. And now you’re seeing both on the Canadian side and the US side, they’re reconciling their hours of operation and adding them back in as they were prior to the pandemic and prior to this

7:59 to the bidenministration.

8:00 Speaker 2 So that alone is going to make a really big difference.

8:03 Speaker 3 With regard to some of the other stuff like fentanyl and whatnot, Canada has taken some really good measures. They’ve they’ve added patrols, they’ve they’ve added you know, some some technology and sensing. They’ve also put you know, stricter fines.

8:17 Speaker 2 And and and uh and uh.

8:19 Speaker 3 Punishments on perpetrators and whatnot. So they’re they’re working very fast, diligently, and I think in response to President Trump’s emergency order, which has of course now been overturned by a court. But having said all of that, things are much much better and and we’re optimistic.

8:36 Speaker 1 Thank you so much, senator uh. Senator, thank you for coming on, and thank you for giving us the the the the pulse of what’s going on in the border. And let’s pray that Canada and America the assister countries, and we’ve always worked well together. Let’s let’s put the deal together to make sure we continue to work well together.

8:59 Speaker 2 We absolutely need to do that. We can do that.

9:02 Speaker 3 And besides that, the University of North Dakota really needs those great hockey players so we can win another NCAA championship.

9:10 Speaker 1 Sanday Kevin Cramer from the great state of North Dakota. Thank you and we’ll talk to again real soon.

9:15 Speaker 2 Look forward to it. Thanks