BURST
Windsor Mayor Drew Dilkens is calling on the province for permission to charge tolls on truck traffic using Huron Church Road for as long as the Gordie Howe International Bridge stays closed.
The demand follows a threat last month from U.S. President Donald Trump to block the imminent opening of the long-awaited publicly funded bridge.
“We’re at the point where we’re saying enough is enough,” Dilkens told the Star. “If we’re going to have a delay in the Gordie Howe bridge, great, then you know what the city wants? We want to make sure that we’re collecting enough money to help refill our coffers, make taxpayers whole, and not leave taxpayers on the hook for these expenses, which are atypical for any municipality to have to deal with.”
Starting May 1 — and until the Gordie Howe bridge opens — Dilkens wants to charge municipal tolls on trucks heading to and from the Ambassador Bridge on Huron Church Road. The major commercial artery runs through a large section of Windsor.
In a video on social media, Dilkens said he wants an exemption to section 40 of the Municipal Act, which prevents municipalities from imposing tolls on highways, bridges, or tunnels without provincial approval.
He posted the video online Wednesday night, ahead of a planned visit to Windsor by Premier Doug Ford on Thursday morning.
Dilkens’s request comes in the wake of Trump’s Feb. 9 social media post threatening to block the opening of the $6.4-billlion bridge — which Canadian taxpayers paid for entirely — until the U.S. “is fully compensated for everything” it has given Canada.
The New York Times reported that Trump’s post followed a meeting in Washington between billionaire Ambassador Bridge owner Matthew Moroun and Howard Lutnick, the U.S. secretary of commerce. The paper attributed the report to anonymous sources.
For decades, the privately owned Ambassador Bridge has held a monopoly on commercial truck traffic tolls at North America’s busiest border crossing.
The Times also reported that in January, Moroun donated $1 million to the Trump-supporting MAGA Inc. super PAC.
“It’s just another chapter in the saga of seeing this new bridge built, where you have the president of the United States saying ‘We’re not going to open it,’” said Dilkens. “He throws out some arbitrary conditions. And then two days later, it’s reported that Mr. Moroun met with Secretary Lutnick, who called the president. And several minutes later, a Truth Social post was put out. And it just picks at the scab that’s there.”
Every day the Gordie Howe bridge remains closed, the damage and traffic congestion continues on Huron Church, and Dilkens said it continues costing Windsor taxpayers.
He said the city spends millions of dollars annually on Huron Church Road upkeep, largely a result of the roughly 10,000 trucks that run along it every day.
Dilkens said Matthew Moroun has been pushing the city to repair a section of the road roughly between the Ambassador Bridge and the train tracks near College Avenue.
“It’s several million dollars to repair that roadway,” said Dilkens. “It’s a concrete roadway. It supports heavy trucks, and again, another few million dollars to fix that roadway.”
He said that cost would come on top of the millions required to fix other parts of the road, and the millions the city has spent in other disputes with the Ambassador Bridge company.
“Why are we continuing to spend millions of dollars in support of these endeavours at municipal expense when we have no revenue coming in from it?” asked Dilkens. “There’s no revenue stream derived from this. It’s all expense to municipal taxpayers.”
Since about 2018, he said the city has also spent between $2 million and $3 million trying to solve various disputes with the Ambassador Bridge company, which had planned for years to build its own second span.
Some of those issues, such as dozens of homes in Sandwich Town the bridge company bought and boarded up amid plans to expand, go back decades.
The Canadian government gave the company a conditional permit to build a new crossing, immediately west of the Ambassador Bridge, in 2017. But the permit expired in 2022 when the government said the company failed to meet multiple conditions.
The Ambassador Bridge company still has plans to build a new inspection plaza in Windsor, immediately north of the McDonald’s on Huron Church Road at the Canadian entrance to the Ambassador Bridge.
Dilkens said the city has spent large sums of money on engineering studies concerning a massive trunk sewer — a major wastewater artery — that runs under the planned plaza. The bridge company will eventually have to relocate that trunk sewer to move ahead with a new plaza.
“When you’re dealing with something like one of the largest trunk sewers in the city, there’s a huge amount of engineering that has to go into looking at rerouting that sewer,” said Dilkens.
“There’s all sorts of different options. And every one you look at costs you a fair amount of money. Add then all of the negotiations you’ve got, specialized lawyers who are involved, and you’re trying to work on a pathway, all the while your municipal road continues to get beat up.”
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Dilkens also noted that the city spent about $7 million during the 2022 Ambassador Bridge blockade, when protesters angry about COVID-19 mandates choked off the vital border point.
The federal government reimbursed Windsor for about $6.1 million, but left the city on the hook for $900,491, which the city is suing to reclaim.
“All of this money adds up,” said Dilkens. “I just got to the point where I’m just tired of us spending all of this money.”