Windsor mayor speculates Ambassador Bridge could be sold after Gordie Howe opens

'The idea that we can have an international (bridge) authority is not a bad idea. We proposed that a long time ago.'

Windsor’s mayor suspects the Ambassador Bridge could be sold to a regional border authority after the Gordie Howe International Bridge opens this month. Speaking with reporters on Monday, Drew Dilkens said he wonders whether a “deal behind the scenes” was made with the owners of the Ambassador Bridge to solidify the Gordie Howe’s July 27 opening date. “The day the Gordie Howe bridge opens, the viability of the Ambassador Bridge certainly plummets,” Dilkens said.

The owner of the Ambassador Bridge “will probably be looking for an exit sooner rather than later with a significant decrease in revenue.” Dilkens said the idea was “all speculation” on his part, and that he was “reading between the lines” and “putting pieces together from conversations” he had and “things” he had heard. A significant amount of commercial truck traffic that currently crosses over the Ambassador Bridge between Windsor and Detroit is expected to use the Gordie Howe International Bridge once it opens.

The Gordie Howe has a direct highway-to-highway connection between Highway 401 in Ontario and Interstate 75 in Michigan, whereas the Ambassador Bridge connects both the I-75 and I-96 in the U.S. to a busy local street in west Windsor. The Ambassador Bridge Company did not respond to the Star’s request for comment. James Blanchard, a former Michigan governor and U.S. ambassador to Canada, told the Star he and others proposed operating both border crossings under an international authority 10 or 12 years ago.

Manuel “Matty” Moroun, who owned the Ambassador Bridge until his death in 2020, turned them down, Blanchard said. “They just kept saying, ‘We don’t need a new bridge. Why are you doing this to us?’

They spent all their time lobbying this topic,” Blanchard said. “The idea that we can have an international (bridge) authority is not a bad idea. We proposed that a long time ago.”

The Moroun family, which has owned and operated the Ambassador Bridge for many years, tried to block construction of a competing publicly owned bridge since the idea was first discussed decades ago. It will be a towering symbol of the Canada-U.S. partnership and friendship According to a report in the New York Times in February, Matthew Moroun made a $1-million donation to a fund collecting money to support President Donald Trump less than a month before meeting with a top U.S. official to lobby against the Gordie Howe’s opening. After that meeting on Feb. 9, Trump posted on social media that he would not permit the bridge to open without compensation from Canada.

A ribbon cutting for the Gordie Howe bridge scheduled for June 12 was cancelled. Both Blanchard and Dilkens said the Ambassador Bridge offers important redundancy for security reasons, such as a terrorist incident at one crossing. Both men also said they were happy the Gordie Howe finally had an opening date.

“It’s good for trade, economic development, jobs, agriculture, tourism, retail — it’s just really important,” Blanchard said. “People will come there just to walk across the bridge and back and look at it and take photos. “It’s going to be a tourist attraction, and it will be a towering symbol of the Canada-U.S. partnership and friendship.”

In May, Dilkens said he would rather see the Gordie Howe bridge opening delayed than have Canada accept a “bad deal” in U.S. trade negotiations. His comments stemmed from a conversation he’d had the week before with U.S. Ambassador to Canada Pete Hoekstra, who told him Canada was being presented with a deal it might not like. Under the original bridge deal signed by Canada and Michigan in 2012, Canada was to collect all tolls and recoup the cost of building the $6.4-billion crossing.

Bridge co-owner Michigan would get half of toll revenues once the bridge was paid off. On Friday, the Government of Canada announced the bridge’s July 27 opening date and said the two countries had “agreed to a series of co-operative measures focused on toll governance and transparency.” President Trump then took to Truth Social to confirm the opening date now that his administration has negotiated what he described as a “better deal” for the United States.

Prime Minister Mark Carney downplayed suggestions that Canada had made major concessions when he spoke with a reporter in Calgary on Sunday. “We get the revenues. Then the servicing of the costs of the bridge and paying the debt of the bridge, and then what’s left over, there’s a split of that for 15 years,” he said.

“There’s not going to be a lot of net to split.” Also on Sunday, Housing and Infrastructure Minister Gregor Robertson took to social media to share a bit more information about the deal. Under the current arrangement, “Canada will continue to collect all toll revenue, with half of net profits then going towards local economic development for 15 years,” he wrote in a post on X. “It’s a good deal for businesses and workers on both sides of the border, creating an incentive for both countries to increase traffic and get the bridge towards profitability: the more trade the bridge facilitates, the greater the profit on both sides of the border.”

On Monday, Dilkens said he doesn’t think the new deal was a loss for Canada and instead lead to a “well-crafted political message that allowed the president to take a win and allows the Gordie Howe bridge to open.” “I suspect very little revenue will flow to that economic development agency over the next 15 years,” Dilkens said. “We built this together.

It truly is a bridge that links two nations, links two cities. We’re all very excited and have been for the course of 25 years, watching this progress and proceed forward.”