The Yankees built a bridge, and they're gonna make Canada pay for it
We have no backbone, and our elbows are firmly down.
In 2012, the former Prime Minister of Canada, Stephen Harper, and the former Governor of Michigan, Rick Snyder, made a joint announcement that they had reached a deal to build a second bridge between Detroit in Michigan and Windsor in Ontario, over the Detroit River which serves as the natural border between them. There was already an existing bridge, the Ambassador Bridge, and a tunnel as well, but as the current bridge facilitates 25% of all freight between Canada and the United States, and the tunnel cannot serve large trucks, the monopoly held privately by the Moroun family became a concern, and competition was sought.
Due to political roadblocks preventing the Michigan State Government from using any taxpayer money on the project, Canada agreed to pay 100% of the costs for building all the infrastructure, and in exchange receive 100% of the tolls for the decades it would take to pay off that large debt—minus operating expenses, also covered by Canada—and then, once the debt had been paid off, split toll revenue 50/50 after operating expenses. This was a reasonable and fair arrangement where, due to Michigan’s internal issues, they consented both to Canada taking a greater responsibility over this binational project, and to us receiving an equivalent financial reimbursement for doing so.
Even better, in May 2015 we announced it would be named after Gordie Howe, Mr. Hockey himself, a Saskatchewan man who played the first 25 years of his career with the Detroit Red Wings and won them four Stanley Cups, and the memory of whom leads Windsor children to prefer the Red Wings to the Leafs to this very day. Naming the bridge in his honour was meant to be a great monument, symbolic not only of the general friendship between our two countries, but the intimate closeness between Detroit and Windsor that makes them feel like one city rather than two, with people regularly crossing back and forth for work and to see their friends and family.
Anyway, that way of life is completely fucked now. I need not elaborate at great length about how the relationship between our country and the Yankees has deteriorated rapidly since Trump’s second term began. His threats to make us the “51st State” have been incessant. Lord knows they would rather make us a territory without voting rights at all.
Nonetheless, Carney has lowered our nation’s elbows and caved repeatedly on domestic policy, only for Trump’s trade envoy to say we don’t get any credit for these unilateral concessions and need to give up even more, which we also, assuredly, will not get any credit for either. As author A.R. Moxon once said:
“Meet me in the middle, says the unjust man. You take a step towards him, he takes a step back. Meet me in the middle, says the unjust man.”
And in the case of the Gordie Howe Bridge, named after Mr. Elbows himself, Carney has once again forced Canadian elbows down. Trump has altered the deal, and Carney must pray he does not alter it any further.
It was in February earlier this year when the trouble began for the bridge. As the New York Times reported it contemporaneously, Matthew Moroun of the Moroun family—the very same Moroun family which controls the Ambassador Bridge and whose monopoly spurred the creation of the Gordie Howe Bridge—met privately with Howard Lutnick, Trump’s Secretary of Commerce, and Lutnick then proceeded to call Trump shortly after the meeting.
The end result was that Trump quickly proceeded to publicly threaten to refuse to open the bridge as it was planned to later this year, demanding a cut of the tolls. And despite contradictory statements to the public about what Carney conceded, in a deal that has not actually been shown to the public, the Toronto Star reports today that Canada will have to continue paying all the operating costs, but instead of being able to use all net revenue to service our debt—debt we incurred on behalf of the Yankees—we will now surrender half of the net revenue to a slush fund designated by the Trump regime. By every manner of it, Carney has caved.
And despite the numerous commentators interviewed for that Star piece that say Carney had no choice but to surrender, that the alternative was keeping the bridge closed, I say this is a false dichotomy. Appeasing Trump has only led to further appeasement. He will surely decide at some point in the future that the deal to open on July 27th won’t be good enough, and that he needs us to give up even more! How do we know he will not tear up this contract, as he just did the last one?
We have a third option. Close the Moroun family bridge. They lobbied Trump to cause this. We are in a game of chicken, and we have the ability to cause direct financial damage to a single family, who has less capacity to weather it than our federal government. Would this be an escalation? Of course. Unfortunately, Trump has never allowed us to deescalate, no matter how many times Carney has abandoned his campaign promises and surrendered bits and pieces of Canadian sovereignty.
We have no choice but to stand up for ourselves, or we will soon find that our country no longer exists in any meaningful fashion. We elected Liberals who claimed they would fight for independence, only for their sole disagreement with Conservatives to be how quickly they can surrender our independence.
If this bridge opens on Sunday under the new arrangement, it will symbolize just how weak Canada has become. After all, the United States will have built a bridge…and they will have made Canada pay for it.