Mr. Speaker, go Bills.
My colleague is absolutely right. In my community, for example, there are four international border crossings. Two of the four bridges in my community alone are two of the four busiest commercial bridge crossings into the United States for commerce and for tourism, for example. In our community, there was $2.4 billion in tourism receipts alone in 2019, prior to COVID.
The majority of our visitor base is domestic, but the primary international visitor base is American, which accounts for over 50% of our spend. Therefore what we need to be doing is taking actions to ensure that we continue to facilitate American visitation into our country, rather than taking steps that would damage in any way American visitation to our country.
The relationship in our border communities is also so close, including the success of our auto sector, for example. In our community there is a General Motors engine plant facility, but there is also one in Buffalo. The 25% tariff discussions going on currently worry me because of the hundreds of workers at the General Motors facility in St. Catharines. If the tariffs are put in place, it may be economically impossible to keep the facility open. The company could simply move the jobs to Buffalo instead, and it would be sad to see that happen.