Though fewer Canadians are choosing to travel to the U.S. while Donald Trump is that country’s president, a complete overhaul of Minnesota’s Grand Portage border facility on Highway 61 aims to “decrease congestion and long wait times” during peak travel periods.
The US$105-million project announced on Monday by the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) agency is to be in service by the fall of 2029, the agency said in a news release.
Until then, the existing aging border facility located about 50 kilometres southwest of Thunder Bay will remain in service, the GSA agency said.
Construction on the new border installation by a St. Paul, Minn. company is slated to begin next summer, the GSA news release said. The existing buildings at the site were constructed in the 1960s.
The upgrade project is to replace all existing “outmoded” buildings with new, modernized facilities with improved security, efficiency, and increased capacity, the GSA agency said.
“This project will help deliver on (Trump’s) priorities to secure the (U.S.) border and create American jobs,” GSA acting administrator Mike Rigas said in a news release.
Meanwhile, the negative fallout on Canadian jobs from Trump’s ongoing tariffs on key Canadian industries appears to be reflected in travel behaviour data.
According to Statistics Canada, the number of Canadians who returned from the U.S. by car or truck in October — about 1.4 million — nosed- dived by 30.5 per cent compared to the same period in 2024.
The downward trend had continued for 10 consecutive months, StatCan noted.
Air travel produced similar data: Canadian-resident return trips from the U.S. in that category fell by nearly 24 per cent in October compared with the same month in 2024, StatCan said.
Despite the current travel trends, the Grand Portage border upgrade is to allow for a “higher volume of vehicles travelling to and from Canada, including fu, ture accommodation of potential future spikes in travellers crossing the U.S.-Canada border,” the GSA agency says.
In addition to new buildings at the Grand Portage port of entry site, the construction project announced this week is to create a wider single lane for large transport trucks, particularly trucks hauling components for wind turbines.
Currently, when turbine equipment passes through at Grand Portage, it can cause a temporary shutdown of some lanes which can create delays and “additional operation challenges,” the agency said.
