As Canadian border agents are set to strike as early as June, Minnesota officials are on alert. 

Canadian border agents voted 96% in favor of going on strike, according to Mark Weber, the president of Canada’s Customs and Immigration Union. The strike could bring traffic to a standstill at border crossings along the larger than 5,000-mile U.S.-Canadian border. Officials in Minnesota, a state home to eight border crossings and 547 miles of a shared border with Canada, are preparing for the strike. 

“Our administration, the [Gov. Tim Walz] administration, we meet regularly with the Canadian government to talk about this,” said Thom Petersen, Minnesota’s agriculture commissioner.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture also warned the border agent strike could have significant impacts on agriculture trade, affecting producers and consumers. 

“We do a lot of commercial. We’re vital to the economic aspect of that. Land borders, there’s trucks going through. Marine, we do a lot of cargo with ships and such,” Weber said.

According to the Canadian government, $2.6 billion of goods and services crosses the U.S.-Canada border daily. Petersen said border agents play a crucial role in those trade operations. Minnesota exported $7 billion worth of goods to Canada in 2023, with agriculture trade making a significant portion of that.

“In any given year, Canada is one of our, if not our top, trading partner, along with Mexico and China,” Petersen said. “A lot of times we export feed, corn, and different beans and things like that to Canada. That can be a really big issue as well as seed and equipment.”

The Canada Border Services Agency, which has over 9,000 members, plans to strike once a federal labor board committee provides a report recommending how the employer, the Canadian government, and the union can create a deal. The report could come out as early as June, prompting the strike.

Because they are essential workers, however, most border agents will need to go to work during the strike as they did during a partial strike in August 2021, which resulted in up to four-hour delays and low productivity. 

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Weber said border crossings could take up to 10 hours during this strike. In 2023, more than 2.6 million people crossed through Minnesota’s border crossings. 

“Our members are very proud of the work that they do,” Weber said. “They love serving Americans as they come through and protecting Canadians. We want to keep doing that. We don’t want to strike.”