The Last Mile But The Longest Yards

The tension waiting for the June 18 bridge and plaza announcement is unbelievable. NOT!

But wait until I tell you what I think really has to be done that may solve the border mess and gives everyone a way out. It all has to do with a 2 KM road.

Let me be direct. Does anyone really care about what is said on Wednesday?

We are going to get an announcement finally about where Canadian DRIC believes the new bridge and plaza should go. It is such a momentous announcement that it has to be buried since it is taking place at the same time as the Public Information Open Houses for the DRIC road.

Oh a couple of Cabinet Ministers are supposed come down here but not the guy who counts, Senator Michael Fortier, if the Star is to be believed. He cannot be bothered coming down here for this silliness. Instead, he has to worry about such important matters as female friends of his staff and how to ensure that he is not implicated in the Bernier affair.

Apparently, Ms. Couillard according to the Quebec media "sought access to Public Works Minister Michael Fortier in order to land herself a contract" since "the Minister who was looking for a building in Quebec to house 700 federal civil servants, according to La Presse's investigation."

A little Parliamentary Hill gossip for you concerning the Senator. Remember Ian Brodie and the NAFTA affair. It is said that "Mr. Brodie will be leaving his post as chief of staff to the prime minister in early July." He has a brother, Neil. Guess for whom he works as senior policy adviser: Senator Fortier.

The interesting part in all of this is that I have not heard anything about an announcement on the same date on the American side for their decision. I thought we were supposed to have an end to end solution. So are the Americans in favour of what we are doing or have they not yet made a decision? Can you imagine if they don't pick the same location as our side does! Then what happens.

Let me try to explain what I think is going on. What we are really seeing is a continuation of the move by the Governments, and the Canadian one in particular, to try to get the Owner of the Ambassador Bridge to sell out. They have to have a new bridge and plaza location announced don't they if they are to be taken seriously.

It is pretty obvious that there was a gross miscalculation by a number of politicians and bureaucrats on both sides of the border. First, they never expected that the Ambassador Bridge Company was ever going to build a second span. How someone could think that after the Bridge Company spent half a billion dollars is beyond me. Second, they expected that they would be able to terrorize the Owner into begging them to buy him out. Bill C-3 was merely one example of that to teach the Owner that the Government could punish him anytime they wanted.

Small things like the construction of the Ambassador Gateway project that resulted in the closure of an Interstate highway for almost two years may have changed their mind. It became necessary for the Governments to escalate the battle to make it appear as if they are prepared to spend billions of taxpayer dollars by going down river by about a mile and duplicating everything on the American side. Never mind that they are destroying hundreds of homes and businesses in Delray and uprooting families.

Hmmmm, I thought that both sides of the border were supposed to share the pain equally. Does that mean the Governments will have to destroy part of Sandwich too? Just wait and see if that happens.

In the end however, the final tactic to be used is the last mile connection between the DRIC road to the Ambassador Bridge. That is what Dan Stamper was talking about in the clip above when he talks about the 2 km that Canada should fix.

It has to be extremely disheartening to the Bridge Company when they look at the DRIC road and see that it is nothing more than the road that they engineered based on the City of Windsor's WALTS Road. Remember the opposition to them and what they were proposing? Yet Gridlock Sam and DRIC effectively chose the same way to get to the border. I do not remember hearing very much opposition to this route, especially from the City of Windsor, probably because it makes the most sense and is the City's idea in the first place.

Whatever happened to the $300 million Border Infrastructure Fund money that was supposed to be used to provide access on an intermediate basis to existing border crossings. We saw activity at the Tunnel where the Senior Levels were going to pay two thirds of the cost of the Tunnel Plaza Improvements (except now the costs have escalated upwards and the Senior Levels are refusing to contribute any more money). But we saw no activity on fixing up the road to the Ambassador Bridge even on an intermediate basis. Why not even though the Joint Management Committee talked about doing so:

• "Make operational improvements to Highway 3/Huron Church Road, on an urgent basis, by building grade-separated intersections and pedestrian crossings at various locations to be determined."

More ammunition for a Bridge Co. lawsuit? No action on something so urgent for 5 years PLUS?

The tactic now is to make it clear to the Bridge Company that they will get no traffic at all. The Canadians don't have the guts to say this so they let the US DRIC in their Draft Environmental Impact Statement say how much of the Bridge Co. traffic would be lost to the new DRIC bridge, up to about 80% of truck traffic! It would be more than enough to put them out of business.

How could Transport Canada say this after the nice things they said about the Ambassador Bridge at the Senate hearings. They didn't. They let the Americans do the dirty work first to see what the reaction would be. Otherwise, one might accuse them of fibbing or perhaps even being deliberately deceptive if this was what was being planned all the way along!

And then we had MTO's Dave Wake at Council telling us that DRIC was not looking into any connections to the Ambassador Bridge north of EC Row. The Bridge Co. is supposed to be thrilled that there will be an exit at the Expressway so that trucks can go north on Huron Church to the Bridge since there will be such an improvement in traffic flow for them.

Except for one thing that I have pointed out many times already.

Unfortunately, Dave Wake forgot to mention a tiny matter with respect to Huron Church North of EC Row. He forgot to remind us that we had Ministers Cansfield and Cannon tell us previously that they are not happy about truck traffic on Huron Church Road. Exhibit number one in the big border lawsuit will be the Schwartz Report drawing showing one lane being reduced in each direction on that road so that it becomes a two-lane road only. Oh, I wish Dave had remembered this so that he could explain how trucks would even consider exiting with such a road to the border.

If that is not a direct threat to the Bridge Company business, then I don't know what is. No wonder Eddie did not have the guts with Greenlink to go north of EC Row. He did not want to be the person who would be deposed first by the Ambassador Bridge lawyers as the person who signalled in the first Schwartz Report what the Governments would do in the end if it was required.

If I am right in what I am saying, then the Governments have planned this action for years. In fact, it makes a mockery of the entire DRIC process. It makes it abundantly clear that there was a predetermined solution for which $60 million of taxpayer money were wasted on this so-called impartial process. The argument will be that the DRIC process was nothing more than a joke designed to justify what had already been decided.

If this is true, then the Danish Professor has a whole new chapter to add in his book on Megaprojects! And the Auditor General of Canada and the Legislators in Michigan will have a field day!

Dan Stamper just called the Governments' bluff at the Michigan House subcommittee hearings. If one looks at the proposed DRIC road, as it approaches the river there is a spot where it can make a turn to the right and connect to the Ambassador Bridge and where it can also turn to the left to go to the proposed DRIC bridge. That spot is about 2 km away from the Ambassador Bridge.

One would have thought, to be blunt about it, that since traffic has decreased so much in volume, that traffic would be directed first to the Ambassador Bridge location as the intermediate solution. Then, when the traffic increased years in the future, as even MDOT's Director conceded, one could look to building a new bridge at the DRIC location and completing the road to that location.

In the end, we all know that the new bridge will really be the Enhancement Project bridge and that the road will go to the Ambassador Bridge site. That was always going to happen if one looks at the experience in Sarnia and in Fort Erie. The only question that really is remaining, and has always been the one that has been outstanding in this file, is who the owner of that bridge will be. Will it remain in private hands or will the Governments take it over (and then ironically give it to private enterprise to construct, finance and operate for up to 100 years!) ?

One interesting fact that some Michigan Legislators may have forgotten or even not known about or did not want to remember. And the same for Ontario MPPs and local Liberal Cabinet Ministers. Did the bureaucracies in both jurisdictions suffer an amnesia attack too?

Both Michigan and Ontario have no choice but must have the road to the Bridge built now. They may even have to lobby the Federal Governments in both countries to help out the Bridge Company! If that happens, the border wars are over.

For your information

• "the Province of Ontario and the State of Michigan are economically interdependent and represent the largest trading relationship between any Province and State, and rank within the top fifteen trading partnerships in the world"

Accordingly, Michigan and Ontario (under the previous Conservative Government) agreed in June, 2002 in a Memorandum of Understanding and Cooperation (with Jim Flaherty who is now Canada's Minister of Finance participating as Ontario's Minister of Enterprise, Opportunity and Innovation so he knows all about it)

• " In order to promote prosperity and economic development in the State of Michigan and the Province of Ontario the parties shall:
  
  -Encourage and solicit private sector involvement and support for economic development activities...
  
  - Continue to work together to identify, solve and/or alleviate border and customs difficulties encountered by both traded goods and services, including traveling persons. The two jurisdictions will inform each other of problems and opportunities as they arise and undertake, where practical, joint lobbying of federal authorities;
  
  -Promoting transportation infrastructure improvements and other strategies for improving safety and efficiency at the U.S.- Canada border crossings located along the Michigan-Ontario border; [Note the use of the word "improvement" and past tense for the word "located."]

What choice now does Michigan have but to tell Ontario and Canada to fix those 2 km to the Bridge! It falls exactly under the Ontario/Canada Border Infrastructure Fund program now doesn't it that was announced on September 25, 2002, just months after the Ontario/Michigan MoU. It was to improve existing border crossings:

• "$300 MILLION CANADA-ONTARIO INVESTMENT AT THE WINDSOR GATEWAY
  
  WINDSOR, Ontario - Prime Minister Jean Chrétien and Ontario Premier Ernie Eves signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) today, and committed $300 million over the next 5 years as part of a joint investment to upgrade existing infrastructure on the Ontario approaches to the Windsor-Detroit border crossings...
  
  "Our border crossings are the life-line of economic growth and prosperity in Ontario, and we must ensure that goods, services and people flow smoothly between Michigan and Ontario," Eves said. "We will continue to work with our federal and municipal partners and the private sector to develop a plan that will reduce traffic congestion and facilitate cross-border trade through this gateway."

If she can kill the downriver alternatives for bridge locations for political reasons on her own, it is time for Governor Granholm to make the phone call to the politicians in the country where she was born since the Memorandum provides the legal requirement for her to do so! Get them to finish the road or Michigan will suffer economically