Thank you very much. This is exactly the right opportunity to be in Parliament. It's exactly what Parliament is for. I appreciate being a part of this committee. It is nice to see some colleagues in person, although I know there are other important things going on in constituencies, so it's a shame we have to be here.
Look, on this issue, there have been many questions swirling for the last number of weeks about a multitude of stories that have been told on the same topic. That's the Gordie Howe bridge. We'll go back a second: Canada built that bridge. It was our idea. It was our initiative. All of the risk was on the backs of Canadians. It was our tax dollars that built it. We paid 100% of the almost $6.5-billion cost of that bridge.
We are expected—and were expected by the deal signed by former prime minister Harper—to get 100% of the revenue. We've learned from the multitude of stories that the Prime Minister is giving 50% of the toll revenue to Washington. That's not exactly what he told us when he was asked the question in Calgary. He said, “We get the revenues”, implying that toll revenues would not be split until the debt of the entire bridge—that's $6.5 billion of taxpayer money—was paid.
We now know that was false. I think Canadians have a number of questions around why that is. We've learned that Canada will now split the revenues fifty-fifty, despite being the only country that put $6.5 billion in. If that is not the case, then I'm sure members of the committee will provide all of the documentation to this committee about all of the details of the deal, to make that clear to Canadians. At the end of the day, we're here on behalf of constituents and Canadians from all our different regions to get to the bottom of this and get to the answers.
The Prime Minister was supposed to be the guy in the room where things happen. He was supposed to be the negotiator on all of this. We're wondering why it took Conservatives and a number of different media stories—all of that pressure—to have the agreement released.
We want just a simple answer to why the Prime Minister didn't answer the question in the way that the agreement is spelled out. We certainly want to know the impact on the fiscal framework. I know that government members of this committee voted not so long ago on Canada's budget. They voted to spend a certain amount of money on a certain number of programs. This bridge, and the cost of this bridge, could impact the fiscal framework to the tune of maybe hundreds of millions of dollars.
We want to know where the 50% is going—if it's going to the Ambassador Bridge and to the friends of the U.S. President for a fund, given that it is not going to Canadian workers and Canadian families and to repaying the cost of the bridge. We want to hear from ministers involved in this negotiation. I think there's been a lack of transparency around that and around where Canada is. We'd like to hear from the minister of Canada-U.S. trade negotiations, Minister LeBlanc. We'd like to have the finance minister at this committee to talk about that fiscal impact. We think Canadians deserve those answers. We want to hear from the Minister of Infrastructure, Minister Robertson, on the bridge, and certainly from officials from the Windsor-Detroit Bridge Authority, to make things clear to Canadians and give them answers.
More than anything, what my colleague has brought forward in this motion is that we want to know why the Prime Minister's answers don't match the reality of the deal. The only way we can know that is by having the deal presented in this committee. We want to know why he said the thing that he said. He probably knew the details of the bill. The Prime Minister has billed himself as the guy to negotiate with the President, the guy who's in the room, the guy who understands economics.