For fifty years, the industrial lifeblood of two nations has been funneled through a private bottleneck, leaving our collective economic security subject to the interests of a single Michigan family trust. We are talking about the most economically vital kilometer of pavement on the entire planet—the Windsor-Detroit border – and right now, it is being treated like a billionaire’s private financial portfolio.
The Ambassador Bridge is privately owned by the Moroun family, who control the crossing through a hierarchical corporate structure. On the American side, the bridge is owned and operated by the Detroit International Bridge Company (DIBC). The Canadian half is owned and operated by The Canadian Transit Company (CTC), which is a wholly owned subsidiary of the DIBC. Together, these entities grant the Moroun family complete private ownership of the international span.
This is the reality for Windsor and Detroit, the twin hubs of North America’s busiest commercial border. For almost 100 years, two nations have allowed their industrial lifeblood to be funneled through a private bottleneck, effectively placing our collective economic security in the hands of a family trust.
Every 60 seconds, hundreds of thousands of dollars in auto parts, produce, and critical goods cross the Detroit River on the Ambassador Bridge. It’s the literal valve of the North American economy, but that artery isn’t governed by Parliament, Congress, or anyone you can vote out of office. It’s been run by the Moroun family. It’s a private empire. It’s not a corridor that is a monument to diplomacy or a triumph of government engineering. It’s an autopsy of what happens when two nations outsource their sovereignty to a billionaire’s bank account: the billionaire’s lobbyists can pick up the phone and utilize their connections to get a meeting and into the president’s ear.
We were told that this is a partnership, but this iron grip has turned historic neighbourhoods into sacrifice zones, of quite frankly, plywood and rotting timber, Windsor’s historic Sandwich and Detroit’s Delray respectively.
What the Ambassador Bridge Company wanted to do, was to build a twin-span on the Ambassador Bridge as justification to not build the Gordie Howe Bridge, and in order to do that, they bought up swaths of land in these historic neighborhoods. They bought up old historic family homes, and they didn’t rent them out, they didn’t lease them, they just left them to rot. It’s been a 25-year fight between Windsor and the Moroun’s, and Windsor only recently implemented a Vacant Home Tax. It wont cause the Morouns any financial hardship, but it will cause their accountants some stress due to additional paperwork and signatures.
Windsor and Detroit have seen firsthand the cost of a billionaire’s bridge monopoly, and it’s destroyed neighborhoods.
But if you look west down the Detroit River, you can see the recently completed Gordie Howe International Bridge. The thing is done. The cranes are down and the steel is linked. It’s a six and a half billion-dollar beast designed to finally break us out of this economic monopolistic nightmare.
But instead of a ribbon cutting that we were expecting, we’re getting a shakedown from the President of the United States while Moroun’s lobbyists are whispering national security nonsense right into the president’s ears.
Gordie Howe’s namesake is being held hostage.
But it’s not just about infrastructure. The Gordie Howe is a six-and-a-half billion-dollar middle finger to a dynasty that has acted like it’s owned the Detroit River in its entirety.
The question isn’t when does the new bridge open; the question is how did we let one family hold two nations by the throat for half a century? Why are we still letting them reach into our wallets today?
The issue is confounding when you consider Trump’s demand for a greater ownership stake and falsely lamenting that U.S. steel and labour and steel wasn’t used.
Nonsense. Both American labour and steel went into the project, just as Canadian labour and steel did. Further, the USA and Michigan aren’t even paying a single penny for the new bridge. Their funding is subtracted from the toll revenue until paid.
But even more founding is that Trump is effectively arguing against his own first administration which oversaw the beginning of construciton. This is just the same playbook Trump has pulled out regarding renogations of the USMCA trade agreement that his first administration negotiated; but now it needs to be rewritten or torn apart. The guy throws hissy fits and temper tantrums.
But this entire mess didn’t start yesterday. The bridge was built in the roaring twenties, and Detroit was so hyped because a private interest offered to foot the whole bill that they voted eight-to-one in favour, ignoring the then-mayor’s warning then a border shouldn’t be privatized. That mayor saw the future, knowing that if you give a private citizen the keys to a border, you’re not building a bridge, you’re building a throne and an empire.
Flash forward to 1979 and the famed investor Warren Buffett actually tried to buy the bridge, accumulating 25 percent. But Matty Moroun realized what Buffett was doing and outmaneuvered him, eventually ending with Buffett selling out his stake to Matty Moroun for a measly amount of money, just tens of millions of dollars at the time.
When NAFTA hit in 1992, Matty Moroun didn;t just own a bridge, he owned the North American continent’s economic jugular.
We saw the cost of that in 2022 with the Ambassador Bridge Blockade and the bridge was shut down for a full week, costing the auto sector $300-Million in direct losses and $6-Billion in cross-border trade. Plants from Lansing to Oakville ground to a halt, and there were even auto companies flying car parts across the river like it was Windsor and Detroit’s versions of the Berlin Airlift. That border stopped being a trade route; it became an economic war zone.
Windsor and Detroit aren’t just stops on the way somewhere else. Our cross-border region is the literal bridge between two giants. We’re the valve, and if that valve gets stuck, the entire engine of the economy for Canada seizes up, and the 401 corridor grinds to a halt.
It would be one thing if it were just President Trump having a tantrum, but the fact of the matter is, the Morouns don’t only argue that they have an exclusive right to a bridge crossing on the river, they actually go so far as to demand to be paid for lost revenue that will flow to the Gordie Howe Bridge upon opening. They want to be paid for the lost future revenue of a monopoly that shouldn’t have been allowed in the first place!
Throwing out numbers to justify their demands, the Moroun’s claim claim the value of the Ambassador Bridge is $5-Billion. But you know what? If they want to talk about fair market value, let’s talk fair market value.
We should deduct $500 million for municipal tax losses caused by the depreciation of homes left to rot and the ongoing policing of these ‘ghost streets.’ Another $1 billion should be accounted for in public health costs, given that residents within 500 feet of idling trucks suffer significantly higher rates of respiratory illness. Finally, we must factor in an additional $1 billion for the economic risk invited during the 2022 blockade – a crisis exacerbated by being the only game in town and the failure to use every tool available to compel swifter government intervention.
We should be charging the owners for the decades of damage imposed on Windsor and Detroit. While they might value the Ambassador Bridge at $5-Billion USD, that figure ignores the staggering liabilities it has offloaded onto our cities. When you factor in the $2.5 billion CAD in damages—comprising municipal tax losses from ‘ghost streets,’ a billion-dollar public health crisis for residents near idling trucks, and the massive economic risk exposed by the 2022 blockade—the bridge’s ‘fair market value’ looks much closer to $2.5 billion CAD. It is time the appraisal reflected the true cost of this private bottleneck.
But numbers aside, President Trump undoubtedly has way to throw sand in the gears and delay, or outright cancel, the opening of the Gordie Howe Bridge. He could direct Customs and Border Patrol to staff it, rendering it unsafe unsafe to operate. Or he could deprioritize the crossing entirely. The man is the president of the united states and he has an army of legislative warriors at his disposal to implement his whims; and if they can’t find it, no concern, the supreme court already ruled that its not a crime if the rpesident breaks the law if its an official act.
So where do we stand now?
Ottawa is finally waking up. The One Canadian Economy Act, which allows us to cut through all the red tape that has been weaponized for ages, is a start but we need to go further. We need federal laws banning private ownership of any international border crossings moving forward because border can’t be for sale. If we can’t control the gates to our house, we don’t own a house – we’re just renting.
We must expropriate the Ambassador Bridge right now. Screw the exclusive franchise whining. Public interest trumps it all. Reclaim it, demote it to a local link, or bold. Turn the bridge into a first-of-its-kind international cross-border pedestrian urban green park with cycling paths, walking paths, and more.
My prevailing sense is that he simply wants his cut. While some in the media compare his tactics to a mob boss, perhaps it’s more accurate to view his actions as a continuous shakedown. He’s already signaled a desire for more than 50% of the tolls; it’s entirely possible he’s now eyeing a larger American equity stake – perhaps demanding 25% of our ownership while Michigan retains its 50%. Ultimately, he is a hippopotamus in the White House: reckless, destructive, and dangerously out of his depth.
As for an opening date, everything’s in limbo with the president’s antics. In Windsor, we’ve learned not to believe in a firm date until the first truck actually drives onto the new bridge and crosses the border. Now, with the project caught in the gears of high-level political and diplomatic maneuvers, its future is once again up in the air.
When the Gordie Howe Bridge opens it will be the literal bypass to all the problems caused by having a private border crossing. The private border era is dying; collectively we need to kill it.
UPDATE 2/21/26 –Moroun donated $1-Million to a Trump PAC immediately before Trump’s announcement
This aired on 610 CKTB
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