Skagway’s mayor talks border crossings for tour companies and the upcoming cruise season

Officials from northern Lynn Canal communities have been meeting civic and industry leaders this week at Southeast Conference’s mid-session summit in Juneau. One of the biggest topics of discussion was whether a workaround for the Passenger Vessel Services act would be in place for the upcoming cruise season. That’s the law that requires most large cruise ships to stop in a Canadian port before heading back to the Lower 48 after a visit to Alaska. KHNS’ Mike Swasey sat down with Skagway Mayor Andrew Cremata about that and whether the Canadian border will be open for tours this summer.

Swasey – Mayor Cremata, thanks for joining us, what were the big topics at Southeast Conference?

Cremata – Probably the biggest topics to come out of Southeast Conference that apply to us one, were issues dealing with borders, including a potential extension for the PVSA, if it’s necessary, the PVSA moratorium. And the other issue were issues dealing with employment. Everybody across the state, in both public and private sectors are struggling to get employees.

And in my opinion, and the opinion of everybody there, that’s going to be a significant challenge this summer. Some of the people have found a clever solution to that. The idea is to pay people more, or to provide better benefits, whatever it might be, to bring people into those jobs. Qualified people. It’s not just a matter of finding people to do, you know, lower-wage jobs. It’s a problem finding professionals, white-collar type jobs. 

So it’s a pretty interesting conversation. We also talked a lot about ferry service and improvements to the ferry in the coming years. This infrastructure bill money is going to at least give us five years to really reshape the marine highway and hopefully provide better marine service across the state. And there’s, you know, lots of different ways to look at how that might shape itself up in the coming years. It may be to partially privatized, it may remain similar to what it’s always been. But you know, my guess is from what I’m seeing, and from the participants at Southeast Conference, is there are going to have to be creative outside of the box solutions to ferry service in the future.

Swasey – Well, let’s dive into the border. This is something that we haven’t really touched on very much yet. What do we have 70 days before tour season starts? Something in that range? Without knowing if the border is going to be open, how can tour companies ramp up for the season If they don’t know whether or not they can go to Canada? So where’s the mindset, what are people thinking at Southeast Conference, is the border going to be open for companies to be able to take tours up to Carcross and into the Yukon?

Cremata – So there’s two parts there. One is the PVSA. I think the conventional wisdom a few months ago from everyone I’ve been talking to was that Canada was going to resolve their issues as far as that goes, allow boats to dock, use the homeport out of Vancouver. And so it wasn’t really a big issue. Murkowski and Young both have long-term plans to deal with the PVSA that probably aren’t going to be voted on before the season. 

So what we’re hearing from Southeast Conference is that Senator Murkowski is going to work on pushing an extension to the PVSA moratorium, just in case something unexpected happens with Canada. Before Southeast Conference, I talked to our federal delegation about this subject and I talked to Mayor Olerud in Haines. We’re actually working on a letter together so that we can show our support yet again for the PVSA moratorium so that when they bring that back to Congress, it has support.

Swasey – Well, if the PVSA moratorium doesn’t get passed, or something doesn’t happen with that, there’s just not cruise ships coming up, or there’s a very limited number?

Cremata – It’d be a limited number because they would only be able to depart from Seattle. So that would definitely put a major kink in the works. 

Swasey – You would still get a modicum of traffic, though, it wouldn’t be like there wouldn’t be cruise ships coming?

Cremata – No, it wouldn’t be a catastrophically bad scenario, but it’s certainly not ideal. And it would have a significant impact. Not just on Skagway’s season, but all across the state.

Swasey – Let’s hit on this border situation because that’s really the most, I think, important thing for so many people. It’s difficult to get through the border, you’ve got to have tests, you’ve got to have, you know, you got to meet all these requirements. You’ve got to be vaccinated, all this stuff. How can tour companies ramp up for the season, not knowing whether or not that border at Fraser BC is going to be open to be able to take people up into the Yukon?

Cremata – Well, they can’t. So just so you understand a little bit of the history on this, it was back as soon as the previous local election was over in early October, I started reaching out with both letters, and through voice communication with our senators with our representatives on a state level. And with our industry partners, advocating for trying to figure out some kind of a solution for our land border issues to the north. I even went to the Yukon government folks, including premier Sandy Silver, about two months ago along with manager Ryan. 

And we were advocating to create some kind of in-transit zone, which would at least allow tour operators to go into the “No Man’s Land,” as we call it between the US border and the Canadian border without being hindered. So you haven’t really crossed the border. 

It’s not just the Canadian border issues that are a problem too. Some of the tour operators I’ve talked to said that because of the strict manifests that they have to show US Customs when they’re coming back through the border, that when we have a full season or even a partially full season, compared to what we had last year, it’s going to create major backups at the border, even if people can’t cross into Canada. 

So that’s another problem that needs to be overcome. We had such a great amount of success with the PVSA because we had the port communities meeting on a bi-weekly basis. It was a grassroots effort to get our state representatives on board with what we were trying to do. Jesse Kiehl took it to the legislature, the legislature were able to grasp it, they got it to our federal representatives, they brought it to the floor of Congress in the Senate and passed it. That’s… It’s a tremendous success story. 

The problem though, with this particular issue with the land border, Skagway is on our own. So while I’ve been advocating, and I know that I got some comments from one of the representatives of Royal Caribbean, who’ve been trying to get to help us with these border issues. They’ve been advocating, I think they have something like 19 lobbyists in Washington, DC, all trying to get this issue before various senators and congressmen, trying to work out something. But it’s a more complicated issue than that. Because it’s not just the US border, it’s also the Canadian border. 

And I don’t know what is exactly going on between the two borders right now. But the one thing I do know is that if there isn’t some kind of solution created, and you have, you know, a bus with 40 people on it and trains with hundreds of people who have to be able to cross that border to function. And they have to fill out an ArriveCan app for every single person and get a PCR test, at, whatever it is, $140, $150 a pop, if not more, it’s not going to work. 

So what we’re going to end up with is, even if we have what I’m considering to be a successful season, and this is a wild guess, I think we’re gonna have 65% to 70% of what a perfect season would be. But even though you may only have 4,000 to 5,000 people in town off the cruise ships on a given day, if they can’t go on the train, if they can’t go on the buses that go over the border, it’s going to feel like a lot more people in town than we’ve ever experienced. 

We’re going to have to move past COVID at some point as a species, not just as governments. And we’d better do it soon, or it’s going to really damage a lot of businesses here, business owners that managed to make it through the pandemic. 

Swasey – Alright, Andrew, thank you so much.

Cremata – Yeah, thank you

For more details about the conference visit seconference.org.