Drivers morouned

Gord Henderson, Windsor Star
Published: Saturday, February 16, 2008

You have to hand it to the folks from the independent Republic of Moroun who run that perpetual money machine called Ambassador Bridge. They've just underlined, as no one else could, the urgent need for a new downriver bridge owned and controlled by the governments of Canada and the U.S.

In erecting barriers blocking the main access route to downtown Windsor for motorists entering Canada, the company might have scored points in its running feud with the city, but its move calls into question something far bigger, this country's sovereignty.

How can Canada call itself an independent, self-respecting nation when it allows a privately owned firm, headquartered in another country, to arbitrarily determine how and where visitors get to enter this country from the U.S.? Where is our legitimacy as a country when one billionaire, 80-year-old American transportation tycoon Matty Moroun, and his supporting cast, can call the shots in determining whether motorists arriving in Canada are allowed to use a key artery, northbound Huron Church Road, to reach city destinations.

The Stephen Harper government has made highly popular noises about defending Canadian sovereignty in the remote high Arctic, even if it means conducting costly show-the-flag exercises, constructing a naval harbour and building expensive ships to patrol the Northwest Passage, and yet here, right on Canada's front doorstep, at the busiest and most valuable trade crossing in North America, it has to live with choices made by a U.S. businessman, regardless of their impact on visitors or returning Canadians.

One has to wonder. Where could this end? If the bridge company were to up the ante and shut down the bridge for a week, in order to undertake "necessary" repairs, would the governments of Canada and the U.S. respond? Or would they wring their hands in impotent indignation while cross-border trade is tied up in knots?

EARLIER BATTLE LOST

We didn't make much of it at the time. But we surely understand now why Herb Gray moved heaven and earth, as Liberal minister responsible for FIRA (Foreign Investment Review Agency) in the early 1980s, in a failed effort to prevent Moroun's trucking empire from acquiring the Canadian half of the bridge. That battle was lost in the federal courts and ended with an out-of-court settlement following a marathon legal struggle.

Gray understood what was at stake. An economic nationalist, he recognized that having the nation's most critical border crossing owned and operated by a private company, a foreign controlled one at that, would not be in Canada's best interests. He knew that real countries, serious countries, don't let private companies run their borders.

But don't blame Moroun for being pugnacious in defence of his licence to print money. If you purchased an item for a reputed $29 million, and it returns at least twice that amount annually (which makes the bridge purchase the best deal since the Dutch acquired Manhattan), you too would fight like a cornered mongoose against anything that might affect the value of that asset.