Sen. Schumer urges U.S. to work with Canada to reopen border

Senator Schumer is urging U.S. officials to work with Canada to reopen the border. Yahoo Finance Canada Senior Reporter Alicja Siekierska shares the details.

Video Transcript

ZACK GUZMAN: Well, speaking of international stories, let's get one in here with a US focus. Because of yesterday, US Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer ventured up to Niagara Falls to press for the reopening of the US-Canada border there, at least to non-essential travel, which we've seen locked off for quite some time here, as soon as possible, in his words. And for more on that, I want to bring on Yahoo Finance's Canada reporter here. Alicja Siekierska joins us now for the latest there. Alicja.

ALICJA SIEKIERSKA: Yeah, so Zack, the US Canada border has been closed to non-essential travel since March 2020. And it's still open to trade, but it means that tourists and people that even own property are not necessarily allowed to cross the border on either side. And that is going to remain in place until at least May 21st. Now Canada and the US have been extending this closure to non-essential travel kind of on a monthly rolling basis. And now we're seeing growing calls, particularly from US politicians, to reopen the border.

As you mentioned, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer was urging the US to begin reopening the border. He wrote a letter to Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and Homeland Security Secretary, urging the departments to work with their Canadian counterparts to come up with a plan to safely reopen the northern border to nonessential travel.

But in Canada, it's a bit of a different story. We're not actually seeing that same pressure because we are very much in the midst of a third wave. Our vaccination effort is not as, we'll say, robust as what you're seeing in the US. We have approximately 35% of our population that has received the first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, but just around 3% are fully vaccinated. And of course, as I mentioned, we are in the midst of a third wave that has led to increased restrictions in regions across the country.

So we're actually seeing politicians here that are calling on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to be more-- have more restrictions at the border. We've seen a lot of travelers that are coming, international travelers that are opting instead of flying into Toronto or Vancouver, they're flying into the US, say, Buffalo, and then taking a taxi cab across the border, because we don't have the quarantine restrictions or the hotel quarantine restrictions that are in place at the airports. And this is kind of a way that people are anecdotally, at least, avoiding those rules. So we're seeing two very different calls from Canada and the US.

ZACK GUZMAN: Yeah, very interesting to see how that plays out. Of course, it takes two to tango there. Alicja Siekierska, Yahoo Finance Canada senior reporter, appreciate you taking the time to give us that update there.