Prime Minister Mark Carney says the Gordie Howe International Bridge connecting Ontario and Michigan may open later than the end of this week, as he had previously indicated, but said there is no cause for concern.
“Everyone is working hard to make sure the bridge is open as soon as possible,” Carney told reporters on his way to a caucus meeting on June 10.
“There’s no big drama. If it takes a little longer, it’ll take a little longer,” he said, adding that the opening of the bridge will “benefit Canadians, Americans, business, tourists, residents for decades and decades to come.”
Carney said a day earlier that the bridge would be open “by the end of the week.”
A ribbon-cutting ceremony is expected to take place on June 12. The bridge is owned by the Canadian Crown corporation Windsor-Detroit Bridge Authority, which is composed of an equal number of representatives from Canada and Michigan.
U.S. President Donald Trump said in February that he would not allow the Gordie Howe Bridge to open unless the United States was compensated for it. He said the bridge agreement, signed under former U.S. President Barack Obama, did not benefit the United States.
Trump also said Canada would own both sides of the bridge, and that there should have been requirements to use American-made materials, such as steel.
A White House official told media on June 9 that Trump’s position has not changed.
Carney told reporters in February that he had spoken with Trump about his threat to bar the bridge’s opening and said the issue would be “resolved.”
He said he explained to the U.S. president that Canada paid $4 billion for the bridge’s construction, that ownership is shared between the government of Canada and the state of Michigan, and that workers and steel from both countries were used in the project.
The $6.4 billion project will be the second bridge, after the Ambassador Bridge, connecting Windsor and Detroit. Former Prime Minister Stephen Harper and former Michigan Governor Rick Snyder reached an agreement on the project in 2012, and the Obama administration approved it in 2013.
Under the current agreement, tolls collected from bridge users will help reimburse the Canadian government for the funding it provided to build the bridge. Once those costs are fully recouped, half of the toll revenue will go to the state of Michigan.
Trump supported the bridge during his first administration, saying in a 2017 joint statement with then-Prime Minister Trudeau that they looked forward to the bridge’s “expeditious completion” as a “vital economic link” between Canada and the United States.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford told reporters in Washington on June 9 that he had doubts about the odds of the bridge opening as planned.
“Let’s see if it opens or not,” he said. “Hopefully it will, if they say it’s going to open. I’m just hearing two stories.”
The Epoch Times contacted the Windsor-Detroit Bridge Authority for comment on the bridge’s opening but didn’t hear back by publication time.
Matthew Horwood and The Canadian Press contributed to this report.
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