Thank you, Mr. Chair.
It's an honour to be here today at the OGGO committee for this very important topic. The Gordie Howe bridge is about a kilometre and a half, maybe two kilometres, from my riding, which borders that of the great member for Windsor West. It was important to come to Ottawa today to discuss this motion.
I want to start off by congratulating and saying thank you to the 6,500 skilled trade workers who put blood, sweat and tears into one of the most amazing bridges I've ever been on. I would just say thank you to them and congratulations. This is their celebration. It's all of Canada's, but it's certainly theirs.
I got to visit that site three or four times over the last six or seven years. What they've done is really second to none. I was also there last Friday for the opening of the bridge. I would just say thank you to all of those who made it happen.
About eight or 10 days ago, I did an interview with a local radio station called AM 800. One of the questions they asked me was this: “Do you believe, MP Lewis, that we'll ever see the full deal or that Canadians will ever know the full deal?” This was before it was released by Bloomberg in the United States. I said that I was not so sure it would be tabled before July 27, at least not by the government. They said, “Okay.” I said that I was cautiously optimistic but knew for sure that our workers, our businesses and the nurses and doctors who use our bridges to go over to the United States to work to put food on their table and their family's table, and who pay an exorbitant amount in tolls, wanted to know exactly where the tolls were going. They want transparency, and they deserve accountability. Quite frankly, it should have been tabled and they should have been told the absolute truth from the get-go.
I won't be overly long, but I want to say one thing to my wife and daughter back home. We have four horses at home, and they ride horses basically every weekend competitively. They both wear cowboy hats. I just want to let them know that just because someone wears a cowboy hat, it's not an excuse to not tell the exact honest truth. It's not an excuse to forget something, so I don't blame them.
When I went across the border yesterday, I took the Gordie Howe bridge. I took the tunnel over to Michigan. I had a meeting and I took the bridge back. I was in awe. It was amazing. When I got through customs, there was a great CBSA officer there. I paid my eight-dollar toll with my debit card.
On the way home, as I was going down the 401, I got to thinking: Where does that eight dollars go? We understand that we're splitting it. It was going to be profit, but now it's revenue from the tolls. We know that 50% is going to the States, to Michigan specifically. We don't know what it's being used for. We don't know what the 50% of the remainder of the money is going to.
One question I would ask is this: Is any of that 50% going to the Ambassador Bridge? Surely it will be in this agreement. Surely the three ministers and the bridge officials—