Transport Committee on May 30th, 2006

[Mario Laframboise, Bloc, Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I see that you have some major reservations about Bill C-3. Is your organization a member of the Bridge and Tunnel Association?

[Dan Stamper]

Yes, we are, and we agreed with their comments. In their comments they identify that the finance toll issues were the ones that were completely supported by their members. That's why they spoke on those issues only, and in their comments they indicated that individual owners would come to this committee with their own comments on the balance of the bill.

[Mario Laframboise, Bloc, Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel, QC]

With the exception of the two proposed amendments, the Association seemed to be in favour of Bill C-3, the follow-up to Bill C-44. However, you seem to be telling us that major consultations are needed before we can proceed to adopt the bill. Did I understand you correctly?

[Matthew Moroun]

Yes, that is correct. Transport Canada has not met with me, my father, or any member of my family. I don't remember giving them a tour of the Ambassador Bridge, and they have much to learn about our operation. I would be very reluctant to perform surgery on anyone prior to having all the information necessary.

[Mario Laframboise, Bloc, Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel, QC]

I would now like to focus on certain specific provisions, since we'll be discussing the bill in the very near future. I understand that you disagree with subsection 23(1) which reads as follows:No person shall, without the approval of the Governor in Council, (a) purchase or otherwise acquire an international bridge or tunnel [...]

You're quitting willing to see a new purchaser, but you do not want a requirement whereby the government has to approve the purchase. Correct?

[Matthew Moroun]

Yes. Bill C-3 would require the transport minister's approval, for example, to pass my interest in the bridge to my family, or my son, or my two daughters. It would also require the transport minister's or the government's approval to sell the bridge to the highest bidder in an auction sale, thus hurting the value of the bridge and my family's investment in it since 1979. It has serious financial ramifications, to the point of almost disenfranchisement.

[Mario Laframboise, Bloc, Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel, QC]

Surely you have an agreement. You mentioned 1992. Are there any clauses in your current agreement with the federal government that would allow you to transfer or sell any interests? Do the agreements provide for such a possibility?

[Matthew Moroun]

There are no transfer clauses in that agreement.

As we maybe stated not so well, what gave rise to the litigation itself was my family's initial ownership of the bridge in 1979. The Minister of Industry, Trade and Commerce at the time felt that a U.S. company's owning the Canadian half of the Ambassador Bridge was in violation of the Foreign Investment Review Act and sought to take the Canadian half of the bridge away through that act.

That was litigated for over 12 years and was settled in a settlement document. It was settled favourably to both sides, whereby much investment was made by our company and cooperation was given. Litigation both in the United States and in the Federal Court of Canada was dismissed, and both parties went on, until now, very favourably.

[Dan Stamper]

I would say that whole litigation issue was around ownership and that all of the litigation was dismissed around the ownership issue. So it put to bed, in our view, all of the concerns we had about restricting our ability to own it, restricting our ability to market it if we chose to do that. Now with this bill, the same issues that were litigated and put to bed come back.

[Mario Laframboise, Bloc, Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel, QC]

If I understand correctly, this bill sets aside everything that you negotiated with respect to ownership and transfer arrangements in recent years. An issue that had already been settled is being called into question. Am I correct?

[Dan Stamper]

That's correct, but it does a lot more than that. It goes on to micro-managing our business, besides undoing what the settlement of 1992 accomplished. It goes into getting into a whole lot of areas that the government has never been interested in. We appreciate that when the government owns the bridge, it has full control of what goes on. The spirit and the intent of this bill has more to do with us than anybody else. The government already has those abilities.

[Mario Laframboise, Bloc, Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel, QC]

I have a second question for you. I had some serious reservations about clause 15, which stipulates that regulations may be made respecting the tolls, fees and other charges that may be imposed by owners or operators. How does the current system of tolls, fees and other charges work? Must you negotiate with the Province of Ontario and do you set these tolls and fees yourself? Do you follow a set procedure?

[Dan Stamper]

We fixed the rates and we supplied those as tariffs to the federal government, both in the U.S. and in Canada. In the past, if there was a complaint, the federal government would contact us. We would go through an explanation of what our tariff was. At one time there was a delay of a toll increase on behalf of the government that we agreed to until we could establish the reason for it.

[Matthew Moroun]

The market forces that control the toll rates are, of course, the Detroit--Windsor tunnel, which is our competitor for automobile traffic. If our toll were to be out of line, we'd lose traffic to them, and vice-versa. Then, of course, with regard to commercial traffic, the Blue Water Bridge in Sarnia is our primary competitor for truck traffic, as well as the Ohio and Pennsylvania turnpikes for routes inside the United States to New York and New England.

[The Chair, Conservative, Merv Tweed]

Mr. Masse

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Thank you very much, gentlemen, for coming. This facility you own has been of considerable interest to my municipality as well as in my riding, which has been affected by the operations and the traffic management for many years, as well as affecting the quality of life of individuals significantly.

The first question I`d like to touch upon is an important issue that has been raised recently with regard to hazardous materials crossing your facility. Do you permit hazardous materials to cross? Secondly, can you tell us the last time there was actually a staged operation to examine how clean-up or mitigation would happen for the spill of hazardous materials? Maybe you could define which ones are actually crossing at your facility, because there have been media reports about that and everything is rumoured, from jet fuel to alum, out there. Perhaps you could start with that, please.

[Dan Stamper]

The issue of hazardous materials has been perpetuated by a number of people who are trying to make a point in Windsor, and I am sure you are aware of this, that we allow things like alum, which is used in drinking water in Windsor and is what you're claiming is a hazardous material that crosses the bridge. We allow seatbelt tensioners. We allow airbags for the automotive. We do not allow flammable, explosive, and other goods.

The one issue that you're talking about was alum, and it was on behalf of the City of Windsor and is used in their water treatment plant. It is not a hazard to our bridge or to the water. None of the issues that you're talking about have been identified. On the other hand, the customs who regulate everything across the border has said to the public and to us that the goods that cross the border are all legal goods.

So these perpetual inflammatory statements about hazardous materials, you're well aware and I think the City of Windsor is well aware, are untrue.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Have you had discussions with the City of Windsor fire department or any other type of emergency preparedness team? When was the last time there was actually emergency training on your facility?

[Dan Stamper]

I can't answer that specifically, but whenever the management of Canada Customs has asked us to do any kind of emergency training, we've allowed that to go on.

I think you're stating the same thing that was in the paper. The union wants to do something in Windsor. We say, “Go to your management, let the management come to us, and we'll deal with the issue.” We've always dealt with the management of Canada Customs in any requests they've made to us.

[Matthew Moroun]

So we aren't going to go around the management.

[Dan Stamper]

Skip just handed me a note. There's one now in the process of being planned with the management of Canada Customs.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

I'm just surprised it has taken this long to actually have a run at it. The other thing is that we still don't have an official plan developed.

I'll move to the DRIC process, and you have identified correctly that there was, in the state legislature of Michigan, some decision date on that, but the funding has not ceased because the amendments have not passed fully yet. There are certainly other stages to go, and you're right, it's about money, not political process at the time.

The DRIC process has identified that adding additional capacity at your facility is not in the interest of overall planning as well as the best choice for redundancy and a series of other reasons, and it's not selected. Are you saying you're going ahead with your expansion against the wishes of the DRIC process and against the wishes of the municipality, which have noted that they do not want a twinning of the facility that you have?

[Dan Stamper]

Let me first say that the DRIC study identified twinning the bridge on the U.S. side as the number one proposal and said it was the right thing to do.

On the Canadian side, the DRIC study partners created an 80-acre plaza in the middle of a community, which created some uproar. It was never a plan of ours--

[Matthew Moroun]

They attributed it to us.

[Dan Stamper]

It was never developed by us.

The DRIC study on the Canadian side said twinning the Ambassador Bridge brought the most benefit. So don't purport that it came to some other conclusions.

The Canadian side, developed by Transport Canada and Ontario, has said, “We don't want to twin the bridge; we want to move a mile west.”