Reason Prevailed

Windsor-Detroit represents the busiest international trade connection in North America.  Through that corridor a half billion dollars' worth of trade a day passes.  Currently the privately-owned Ambassador Bridge remains the conduit for that trade.  It is a hugely profitable enterprise for the family that owns it. 

For the bridge tolls represent an investment that never stops giving its gift of profit. Trouble is, there is too much traffic going in each direction for the bridge to handle expeditiously. 

In the wake of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States the Canadian Senate Committee on National Security and Defence urged the government to initiate a new bridge to be put in place by 2013.

Its report, Borderline Insecure, considered the various infrastructures that represent vulnerability that might appeal to terrorists as ripe targets.  Those threats to areas critical to Canada's security and its economy haven't really changed.  They concluded that the Ambassador Bridge represented the top of their list; if that bridge somehow shut down the economy in Canada would be devastated.

And so was born a commitment by the federal government to move forward with plans for another bridge, reaching an agreement with the State of Michigan to built a span to be named the New International Trade Crossing.  And it will be scheduled to be traffic-ready by 2017.

Not if the owners of the Ambassador Bridge had anything to say about it, however.

Despite that Canada had agreed to pay the entire $2.1 price tag for the proposed bridge, and to exact tolls that would take 50 years to pay back the investment, the plan was placed in jeopardy by the existing bridge owners protecting their monopoly by spending millions to advertise falsely that the new bridge would have to be paid for by Michigan taxpayers.

And as a result they succeeded in having a bill - Proposal 6, the Michigan International Bridge Initiative - placed on the November 6 ballot alongside the presidential vote.  The Maroun family had no desire to see their cash cow milked by anyone other than themselves. 

Alas, for their future plans of continuing to reap their profitable windfall, Proposal 6 was voted down.

As a result of the bridge construction, Michiganders can expect more employment and greater state prosperity from spin-off opportunities.  And once the Government of Canada has been repaid over the 50-year toll collection, the State of Michigan will share with Canada in the collection of tolls for the following 75 years.

Everyone wins, with the exception of the Maroun family.