(upbeat music) - Hello and welcome to "Prairie Pulse."

Coming up later in the show, we'll hear music from Samantha Grimes.

But first, Matt Olien a chance to sit down with the new Consulate General of Canada in Minneapolis.

- Hello, and I am with Beth Richardson.

She is the newly appointed Consul General of Canada in Minneapolis.

Welcome to Prairie Pulse, Beth.

- Thank you so much for having me, Matt.

- Before we start, just tell folks a bit about yourself, your background, where you're from originally.

- Sure, yeah.

I'm really delighted to be back in Fargo.

Thank you for having me on your show.

- [Matt] Yeah, of course.

I'm from the Prairie.

What you call the Great Plains, we call the Prairies.

In Canada I'm from Edmonton and I grew up in a military family, not an ag family, but both my parents were in the military.

So I grew up on military bases, including in, I was born in Europe where Canada had a military base for NATO during the Cold War, and spent most of my life in Edmonton and Ottawa joined the foreign service to see the world.

- What does the Consulate General of Canada and Minneapolis actually do?

- Yes.

- What is your job?

- So we have an office of about 20 people in Minneapolis, and we, our job is to foster better relationships, expand trade between Canada and five states.

So North Dakota, Minnesota, Iowa, Nebraska, and South Dakota.

And we're part of a network of 12 consulates US Canadian consulates across the United States that do that work in partnership with the embassy in Washington.

- And tell me about the five, you mentioned the five states, but how do you work with each of them?

I assume each of 'em have different issues.

I mean, trade, I know it was a big deal with farming and agriculture, but tell me about each of the states and what you do.

- Absolutely, so this part of the world, those five states, they do about $50 billion worth of trade with Canada.

So if the United States was not a country, just this little region would be our eighth largest trading partner in the world.

I think it's a really untold story, the agricultural innovation, Cleantech in this part of the world.

Medical devices, especially in Minnesota, the energy trade with North Dakota is tremendous.

About $5 billion a year between Canada and North Dakota.

And so, what we do in Minneapolis is we try to grow that relationship and we're very lucky the United States is our best neighbor to have.

So it's an easy place to work and we're very fortunate that people in North Dakota and across our region already have a wealth of experience with and partnerships in Canada.

- How were you appointed and tell me about the process you went through to get this job.

- So, I'm a career diplomat.

Public service has always been part of my life.

It's been my entire career.

So in our foreign ministry, we apply for positions and I was very lucky to get this, this is my second assignment in the United States.

And when you're a diplomat, being able to contribute to the largest trading relationship, the most integrated security partnership in the world between Canada and the United States, it's a real privilege.

- What kinds of issues, I mean, you mentioned trade.

What kinds of issues are you involved in with the states?

- So we do a little bit of everything.

Trade is kind of our bread and butter.

So helping more Canadian companies do business here, helping American companies, organizations who want to invest in Canada, that would be one of the largest things we do.

We also have a political section that works to build the relationships between Canada and the United States at the political level.

So I'm sure you know, there's a intricate web of institutions in the United States and Canada that partner, so that there's an International Legislators Forum, there's a Governor's Association by region in the United States, which Canadian premiers also come down to.

So part of our job is to be a bit of a nexus for all those different relationships.

And we work very closely with Canadian provinces, especially Manitoba, Ontario, Saskatchewan, Alberta, that have quite a lot of interests down here as well.

- Interesting.

What kinds of groups and leaders do you meet with?

And I assume you've been out there doing a lot of traveling since you were appointed last year.

- Absolutely, so as I was telling you before, this is my third trip to Fargo, fourth trip to North Dakota in the last eight months since I was appointed.

We have about $10 billion in trade every year with North Dakota, which is pretty impressive, given our population size is a little bit smaller.

So we work with all kinds of groups.

So I'm in North Dakota this time because there's a global Business Connections conference put on by the North Dakota Trade Office that I'm speaking at.

And we have our deputy ambassador down for that.

The first time I came here, we had an indigenous food systems dinner at BernBaum's down the street here in Fargo, learning a little bit about indigenous food systems and food sovereignty and how Canada and the United States could contribute to that.

My first trip up this into North Dakota was actually to Grand Forks and Cavalier.

So in Cavalier we have Canadian forces personnel stationed at the US Space Force that's up there.

And I went to visit them and learn a little bit more about Space Force, which is linked with NORAD, the Canada, US by National Military Command.

I'm trying to think of what else I've done in North Dakota.

- [Matt] It's a lot.

- It's been expansive, yeah.

We also have an active program of cultural collaboration.

So I know there's been some film festivals up here that have shown Canadian film and across our whole region that's a bit of a priority for us.

So yeah, that's a bit of an overview of what we do.

- What are some similarities and maybe differences with the five states that you deal with?

I mean, Minneapolis is that hub, that huge population center, which is very different from the kind of the rest of state of Minnesota that we, our service covers the western part of Minnesota.

But what are some of the differences you've noticed and similarities too?

- Yeah, I mean, I think the similarities, and I'm gonna come back to this untold story part, because the innovations in agriculture and clean tech in this part of the world are really not well understood by Canadians.

And that's part of my mandate as well to share the story of this part of America with Canadians so that they see the opportunities here.

And just the way in which technological innovation in agriculture, Cleantech, MedTech is keeping Canada and the US at the forefront of global change, right?

The transition to the green economy industries of the future.

How we're gonna make sure that we keep high paying, well paying jobs on both sides of the border.

That act in a way to sustain rural livelihoods, right?

That not everybody has to end up moving to the big city.

Now every state has a slightly different economy, right?

So we do a little bit more medical devices in Minnesota, since that's a bit of a hub.

We purchase almost all of the ethanol that Iowa exports.

It's a huge industry for us.

North Dakota, it's overwhelmingly oil and the energy sector that we do business with.

- Hmm, interesting.

How have your years in the foreign service do you think prepared you for this job?

Tell us some, a little bit, some of your travels too.

- Sure, that's a really interesting question.

So this is my sixth foreign posting.

I was in Seoul, let me just count through Seoul, London, Moscow, Miami, Vilnius, Lithuania, and then Minneapolis.

And as I said before, like what happens in the United States is consequential for Canadians, right?

Because our economies are so integrated.

And so, it's sometimes sounds very exotic to go to the far away places, but if you wanna have an impact for your country, you ask to be stationed in the country that's the best partner of your country.

So how has my career in the foreign service prepared me for this?

You know, I think staying curious is one of the most important parts.

Curious about people, curious about cultures, not making any assumptions, trying to understand the place you're at from that group's perspective or from that region's perspective.

And that's part of the reason I've picked two consulate postings in the United States instead of in Washington.

It's very hard to understand a country from their capital.

- Right.

- Right?

For all of our countries, but especially countries as vast as United States and Canada.

And I usually tell people there are many Americas and it's important to try to understand each of them from their own perspective.

- It is the same in Canada, isn't it, Beth?

- [Beth] Absolutely.

- I mean, Western and Eastern Canada are extremely different if people don't understand.

Maybe you can just touch on that as long as you kind of mentioned the various states too.

- Sure, yeah, sure.

I mean, so I'm from Alberta.

It has a very similar feel to North Dakota.

They're cultures that are shaped by pioneers, right?

So incredible self-reliance, but also an incredible sense of community helping each other, that sort of thing.

So the plains part of the United States and the prairies part of Canada, I find are more similar than one might expect.

And then in Canada we have kind of the founding provinces, Ontario, Quebec and the Maritimes, and then British Columbia off to the West coast.

- Can you talk about maybe there's kind of a big issue that you're involved with trying to smooth over with the US and Canada involves the dairy industry.

Can you kinda explain what's going on there?

What people probably don't know?

- Yeah, sure.

So Canada and the US have about $1.3 trillion in trade every year, that's like too big a number for me.

It's about three and a half million dollars a day.

Think about making three and a half million dollars a day.

So the vast majority of that is friction free.

You know, we have the USMCA, we have free trade on almost all our products, so occasionally there are irritants.

And it's funny, we just had our minister of industry, he came to Nebraska last week and he said, "The US is like our brother-in-law.

We don't always call him on his birthday, but we call it if we needed to sleep on his sofa."

And I really think that was quite a good example, like of being in the same family.

So irritants come up occasionally, but I think the important thing to note about that, and I will talk a little bit more specifically about dairy.

So we share a common agreement on how to resolve disputes.

And that is uncommon in international relations because a lot of times countries don't actually agree on how to adjudicate disagreements.

And overwhelmingly, between Canada and the United States, we have very firm systems, institutions and relationships to help resolve disputes.

So under the USMCA, there's a dispute panel mechanism when one country of like that's a party to the agreement doesn't agree how some elements of the agreement are being implemented.

So on dairy, the United States was looking for more access to the Canadian market.

And so they filed a request for adjudication.

This dispute settlement mechanism, about two years ago, that first panel found half in Canada's favor, half in the United States' favor.

So we changed, which is very technical, but we changed the kinds of companies that can sell dairy into Canada.

So the United States wanted us to go a little bit further.

So they launched another dispute settlement panel, and the decision for that was rendered last November it found in Canada's favor.

So that the market access that we had offered to the United States was compliant with the USMCA and there's no requirement for us to go beyond that.

And that's a decision that some American milk producers don't love, but we all agree that the dispute settlement mechanism is the mechanism we all signed onto.

- What are some other commodity areas that the US and Canada deal with, especially agriculture within these five states?

- Yeah, so the first obvious one is agricultural machinery.

I was just sitting next to a gentleman at the Global Business Conference from Titan Machinery, and he was telling us about all the Canadian farmers, agricultural companies that procure from him.

I'm gonna come back to this innovation because I really feel like it's an untold story.

So we have had a couple companies go out to Grand Farm to trial their agricultural technology.

One of them is a Toronto company called Susterre that does high pressure, precision water irrigation.

That will allow no till sewing.

And that's a way that farmers can save water basically and reduce the costs of tilling fields and still get the same result.

So we're seeing a lot of those technological innovations that happen here.

General Mills also has a project with Canada, with Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and North Dakota on regenerative agriculture to increase the yield of oats.

So almost all the oats in Cheerios, for example, are grown in Canada, then they're shipped down to the United States.

They're processed in Minnesota, they're boxed, I believe in Illinois and then sold back to Canada.

So that's an example of kind of our integrated relationship in agriculture, for example, different parts of Canada and the US specialize.

So Canada exports a lot of fertilizer to this part of the United States, which is used to grow crops, which feed livestock.

And in Canada we send most a lot of our livestock to the United States for processing.

So for Iowa, for example, our largest export to Iowa is pigs and our largest import is pork.

So it just shows you how our economy is quite integrated in that way.

- Interesting.

Are there any border issues that you're dealing with right now with US and Canada?

Of course the northern border gets far less coverage in the states than the southern border, but any ticky-tac things or border issues that you guys have to deal with?

I know the passport is now required, for American citizens to get into Canada.

It wasn't in the old days, but now it is.

But anything like that going on?

- Yeah, I mean, look, it's a secure border and regular passage of people moving across the border is critical to our national security, it's critical to American national security and it's certainly a very high priority for the government of Canada.

There's about 400,000 people that cross the Canada US border every year.

Sorry, every day.

- Every day, yeah, right.

- It's a huge number.

We have multiple partnerships across government departments between Canada and the United States on managing the border.

So we have our Royal Canadian Mounted Police, we have customs and border agency in Canada that work with CBP and Border Patrol in the United States as well as local law enforcement.

So one of my first trips actually to North Dakota was to go up to Grand Forks because that's where the sector office for the Customs and Border Patrol is.

And we had RCMP, like Canadian police officers come down and to discuss joint planning for the next year.

And between Canada and the United States on some parts of the border, there's a program, an integrated program where law enforcement can operate in the other country with the same authorities as in their home country.

That's a very, again, that's unheard of in international relations that you would let foreign police officers onto your territory to conduct law enforcement operations.

But we have that between Canada of the United States because of the length, like the time period that we've been cooperating together and our joint commitment to make to border security.

- How many staff do you have in your office?

- We have 18 people.

- Okay.

- In Minneapolis, about a third do trade promotion and then another third do our, like manage our political relationship.

I was mentioning consular, so we don't actually quite know how many Canadians are in our territory.

- That's what I asked.

- They don't need to, they don't need to tell us when they come to the United States.

And of course there are many opportunities for Canadians to work in the United States and vice versa.

And the USMCA makes that even a little bit easier.

So we have a voluntary system that they can register in case there's an emergency or that sort of thing.

But between Canada and the United States, it becomes very difficult to know exactly how many.

But we do have a.

- It used to be a very fluid border.

- Absolutely.

- A 100, 200 years ago.

150 years ago, yeah.

- I well remember as a kid, right?

Like I crossed the border with my family.

I was, I don't know, like six.

And a guy said, "Are you Canadian?"

My dad said, "Yes."

He said, "Are these your Canadian children?"

My dad said, yes, and that's it, we were on our way.

- [Matt] Yep.

- So I think global security means we have to be a little bit more careful these days, but certainly it's a pretty seamless border for most people.

- I think I know the answer to this, but it gets asked, does your office try to stay out of political entanglements with the US presidential race, these kind of things going on?

- Yeah, you know, it's funny, I think many people in the world have their eyes trained on the US election campaign.

And I can't say that we're any different in Canada, right?

It's an interesting experience.

Canada and the United States were partners long before Canada was even a country, right?

In terms of trade and bilateral relationships.

We work with whatever administration the American people choose and have done so without difficulty for more than 200 years.

So while we're avid watchers, we know that we're gonna be able to continue our partnership no matter what, right?

And I'll also reinforce too, our relationships expand well beyond the federal level, right?

So we have governors who go to Canada, Canadian premiers, provincial premiers who are coming to the United States.

There's this web of connections at the state level, state and provincial level that also helped to sustain us.

- About a minute to go, what is it that makes that US Canadian relationship so special?

We talk about the unsecured border, which is bizarre to some people in other parts of the world.

But what is it, can you put it into words what makes it so special?

- Sure, I mean we have shared values and a shared view of how the world should be.

We trust each other.

I would say that's one of the biggest things that we have this incredible trust that allows us to work together and our economies are so integrated, our supply chains so integrated that we rely on each other and that wouldn't be possible without the trust that we have.

- And you said also if Canadians get in trouble in the US you can help them.

How does that work?

Whereas we run out of time here.

- Yeah, I mean sometimes the Canadians come down here and for instance, they get injured, they end up in the hospital, that sort of thing.

We offer consular services to Canadian citizens at our embassy or at our consulate general, but we also offer services to Americans who are looking at trade opportunities in Canada.

So I absolutely always encourage people to get in touch.

- Finally, if people want more information to contact your office, how do they do that?

- Yeah, so we're online, we're on the Facebook and Twitter.

C-A-N, CanGCMNPLS, M-N-P-L-S. And then I'll also give you the phone number.

I have it written down here, well bear with me.

It's 1 844 880 6519.

And we'd love to hear from North Dakotans.

- Thank you Beth for being on "Prairie Pulse."

We really appreciate it.

- Thank you so much, Matt.

- Stay tuned for more.

(upbeat music) - Samantha Grimes brings her mesmerizing voice and quick witted lyrics to the stage, along with her left-handed and upside down guitar playing.

Her original music reaches back to some of her favorites from throughout her career.

(country rock music) ♪ The writings on the wall ♪ ♪ Say nothing at all ♪ ♪ But that look upon your face ♪ ♪ Is pretty hard to mistake ♪ ♪ I get lost then I'm found when I'm up ♪ ♪ I go down on you ♪ ♪ In the blink of an eye I don't know why I hide, I do ♪ ♪ You and I aren't like her or him ♪ ♪ Our history is not a casual thing ♪ ♪ We're tethered lives together on the end ♪ ♪ Of a red string ♪ ♪ A red string ♪ ♪ And the timing's never right ♪ ♪ For stolen moments in the night ♪ ♪ And you're never quite at ease ♪ ♪ When you're lying through your teeth ♪ ♪ When you're biting your tongue ♪ ♪ And the blood starts to run are you still fine ♪ ♪ True we both made our beds but it's couches instead ♪ ♪ For our kind ♪ ♪ But you and I aren't like her or him ♪ ♪ Our history is not a casual thing ♪ ♪ We're tethered lives together on the end ♪ ♪ Of a red string ♪ ♪ A red string ♪ ♪ Ah ah-ah-ah ah-ah-ah ah-ah-ah ♪ ♪ Ah-ah ah ah ♪ ♪ Ah ah-ah-ah ah-ah-ah ah-ah-ah ♪ ♪ Ah ah ah-ah ♪ ♪ But you and I aren't like her or him ♪ ♪ Our history is not a casual thing ♪ ♪ We're tethered lives together on the end ♪ ♪ Of a red string ♪ ♪ A red string ♪ ♪ A red string ♪ ♪ A red string ♪ (blues-rock music) ♪ Carry on without me ♪ ♪ I'm on fire you don't want the ashes, the desire ♪ ♪ You don't want the chaos I create ♪ ♪ You don't want me ♪ ♪ So hide me in your desk drawer where I'll wait ♪ ♪ Picture perfect secrets ♪ ♪ Never let 'em see the light of day ♪ ♪ You don't want me ♪ ♪ I'm only lookin' out for you ♪ ♪ So think of all the damage I could do ♪ ♪ Oh how's a broken heart allowed to bruise ♪ ♪ Why is the first case always the worst case ♪ ♪ When it comes to you ♪ ♪ Ah-ah ha I'm only looking out for you ♪ ♪ So come on baby tell me that you get it ♪ ♪ I only said it 'cause I meant it ♪ ♪ I feel it's so obvious ♪ ♪ My heart's just pulp and lies ♪ ♪ Oh trust me I'm no prize ♪ ♪ You don't want me ♪ ♪ I'm only looking out for you ♪ ♪ So think of all the damage I could do ♪ ♪ Oh how's a broken heart allowed to bruise ♪ ♪ Why is the first case always the worst case ♪ ♪ When it comes to you ♪ ♪ Oh-oh I'm only looking out for you ♪ ♪ Ah ah-ah ♪ ♪ Ah-ah ah-ah ♪ ♪ Ah-ah-ah-ah ah-ah ♪ ♪ Ah-ah ah-ah ♪ ♪ Why is the first case always the worst case ♪ ♪ When it comes to you oo-oo ♪ ♪ I'm only looking out for you ♪ ♪ So think of all the damage I could do ♪ ♪ Oh how's a broken heart allowed to bruise ♪ ♪ Why is the first case always the worst case ♪ ♪ When it comes to you ♪ ♪ Ah-ah ah-ah ♪ ♪ I'm only looking out for you ♪ ♪ I'm only looking out for you ♪ - Well that's all we have this week on "Prairie Pulse."

And as always, thanks for watching.

(upbeat music) - [Narrator] Funded by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund with money from the vote of the people of Minnesota on November 4th, 2008, and by the members of Prairie Public.