Gordie Howe Bridge will open this week, Mark Carney says

“It’s positive news, obviously,” he told reporters on the way into a cabinet meeting in Ottawa.

“The bridge will be open at the end of the week,” he added, calling the massive cable-stayed structure across the Detroit River “a symbol, but also a fact of co-operation between our countries.”

While a ribbon-cutting ceremony is scheduled for Friday, the bridge will not begin carrying traffic until later in the month. Some Detroit news outlets are reporting the opening will be Monday, but bridge officials have not confirmed a date. 

With direct links to Highway 401 and I-75 in Michigan, the bridge named after former Detroit Red Wings star and Saskatchewan native Gordie Howe is expected to become the main route for two-way truck traffic between Canada and the U.S., carrying billions of dollars’ worth of goods.

It will allow truckers and travellers to avoid the nearly 100-year-old Ambassador Bridge, which on the Canadian side can only be reached by navigating a five-kilometre Windsor road dotted with traffic lights, slowing traffic. 

“What happens at this border impacts every kitchen table and factory floor in the country,” said Canadian Trucking Association president Stephen Laskowski. 

“Atlantic seafood, Quebec aerospace parts, Prairie agriculture and Western energy equipment all rely on this crossing,” he added in a statement, noting processing facilities such as X-ray scanners at the new bridge are state-of-the-art and will provide faster service. 

In Washington, D.C., to lobby members of Congress and others on the need for a renegotiated Canada-U.S.-Mexico trade deal, Premier Doug Ford hailed any moves to open the link, which is the longest cable-stayed bridge in North America and the tenth largest in the world.

“Hopefully it will,” he said when asked about the plan to open it soon.

“It’s going to create thousands and thousands of jobs and increase flow back and forth,” Ford added in a nod to auto parts and other materials that are needed at auto plants on both sides of the border. 

“If we get this (trade) deal done, everything is going to flow a lot quicker. There’s going to be more jobs, more opportunities for everyone.”

The new bridge, an imposing and dramatic fixture on the skyline visible from kilometres away, has been a political hot potato for months, and is owned by Canada and Michigan.

Canada funded the construction and will recoup the cost through tolls. After that, revenue will be shared.

In February, U.S. President Donald Trump insisted in a rambling social media post that the bridge would not open until the United States is “fully compensated for everything we have given them (Canada)” and falsely claimed the bridge was built with “virtually no U.S. content.”

Carney subsequently spoke to Trump over the phone and said Trump’s bridge threat would be “settled.” 

Fearful of losing business, the owners of the Ambassador Bridge met with U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick prior to Trump’s social media threat, the New York Times reported.

The report said billionaire bridge owner and trucking magnate Matthew Moroun donated $1 million to a Trump-supporting political action committee a month earlier. The White House and the PAC both denied any connection between the donation and Trump’s outburst.