Liberals Block Committee Review Of Gordie Howe Bridge, Cite Bridge's Right To Privacy
The Gordie Howe International Bridge, a six-lane structure visible from space and from most of Windsor, has apparently developed a shyness problem.
Liberal members of a House of Commons committee voted this week to block a review of the bridge's financing deal, on the reasoning that everything is fine and studying it would only make people wonder whether everything is fine. The bridge cost somewhere north of $6 billion, a number that has been revised upward with the calm regularity of a tide chart.
The defence is elegant. A committee review would require officials to explain the numbers, and explaining the numbers takes time away from building the bridge, which is already late, partly because of the numbers. Members opposite called this circular. Government members called it fiscal prudence and moved to adjourn.
What makes the manoeuvre genuinely impressive is the audience. This is a bridge to Detroit. It exists because Canada agreed to pay for the American half of a crossing the Americans wanted but would not fund, then agreed to pay Michigan back out of the tolls, a deal Canadians accepted because the alternative was one privately owned bridge deciding the fate of the auto sector on a whim.
We covered the cost of a foreign country's infrastructure, waited a decade, absorbed the overruns without complaint, and named it after a hockey player from Floral, Saskatchewan.
The one thing we will not do is let a parliamentary committee ask how much it was.
Gordie Howe played until he was 52. The paperwork will outlast him.