What is going on with the new Gordie Howe Bridge deal?
The bridge between Windsor and Detroit was scheduled to open earlier this year, offering another avenue for truckers heading north and south in one of the busiest trade corridors in North America. This should have been a good news story – hooray, more trade, shared prosperity, etc.
Naturally, it went off the rails. The Ambassador Bridge, for years the primary Windsor-Detroit link, is a privately owned tolled bridge that charges about $100 per truck. After some furious lobbying, suddenly the Americans were no longer keen to let the Gordie Howe Bridge open at all.
And then, because Donald Trump is the U.S. president, it turned into a shakedown.
Suddenly the Americans needed a new “deal” with Canada.
This was necessary despite the fact that Canada paid for the bridge, the entire $6.4 billion cost, about $160 per Canadian.
So when it was announced that Canada would share the bridge revenue with the United States, there was understandable ire from the public, and from the Conservative opposition. Had ‘Elbows Up’ Carney caved to Trump? Had we been robbed of our lunch money by the orange bully?
Maybe.
As of the writing of this column, we haven’t seen the agreement. And there appear to be two possible interpretations of how it will shake out.
On July 16, asked about the bridge revenues, Carney indicated that Canada will only be sharing net proceeds from the tolls, not a split of gross income.
“We expect that after those costs, for the first few years, net revenues will be modest – in fact, we expect them to be negative,” Carney said.
Carney also suggested that revenue sharing might not start until after “all the debt” was repaid. Does he mean all $6.4 billion? The original plan was to have the bridge pay for itself. If so,
However, just a day later, national media outlets were quoting government sources, saying that the debt wasn’t part of the agreement. In other words, we’ll be splitting revenue with the Americans and only having half of it to pay off the bridge for many, many years.
So we either got away with almost everything we wanted, or we got mugged.
You could – and no doubt the PM will – make the argument that opening the bridge is worth some extra cost, because the increased trade will boost the Canadian economy, creating jobs and tax revenues.
That may be true. But that was also why Canada built the entire thing on its own – the Americans were too stubborn to cooperate, and we were forced to go it alone.
Either way, we need to know the truth about the tolls.