Good morning, and thank you very much, Madam Chair, for welcoming us here today.
The Windsor-Detroit Bridge Authority, or the WDBA, has been here previously at this committee and other committees. It's always a privilege to be here in Ottawa to speak about the Gordie Howe International Bridge project. It is a very exciting time for this project and for the WDBA. Just last month, the Prime Minister joined us in Windsor, and we celebrated the official start of construction. It's one of the largest infrastructure projects ongoing right now in North America.
The construction of the Gordie Howe International Bridge is a project that is very good news for Canada and Canadians. As you know, the Windsor-Detroit gateway sees over 30% of the total of Canada-U.S. trade, and that's all by trucks across the border at Windsor-Detroit. This amounts to over $100 billion a year.
An important benefit of the Gordie Howe International Bridge project is that it'll provide the capacity for the current and future long-term needs of our country. As well, the completed project will provide highway-to-highway connection between Ontario and Michigan. In fact, you can get on the 401 on the eastern border of Ontario and travel all the way to Florida, with one stop only at the border, and that will be a high-tech border crossing at the new international bridge.
Together, these features will work to improve the flow of people and goods between Canada and the U.S. It's arguably the most important trade corridor between Canada and the United States. While the WDBA was created in 2012, we started operations in August 2014. Since then, we've been very busy preparing for this once in a generation undertaking.
Over the past few years, we've worked on two parallel streams: managing the public-private partnership procurement process, which was just completed at the end of September, to select our private sector partner to design and build, finance, operate and maintain this project; and preparing the sites of both the Canadian and U.S. ports of entry, along with the extension from the U.S. port of entry out to the I-75 in Michigan.
Our private sector partner is Bridging North America. It's comprised of some of the most recognized names in international infrastructure construction projects. There are American, Canadian and international partners in that consortium.
The fixed price contract for Bridging North America is valued at $5.7 billion. This includes the design-build phase and the operation, maintenance and rehabilitation phase of the project. Bridging North America was selected, and will be held to a 74-month construction schedule which will see the bridge open by the end of 2024. This contract is actually very good value for Canadians. It's a fixed price contract. The private sector partner assumes risk related to the material cost and any cost increases or cost fluctuations.
A value for money analysis was conducted by an independent firm. That analysis demonstrated that using the P3 model for this project had a savings of about 10%, a little over half a billion dollars compared to other methods of procuring and constructing such a project.
As I mentioned, at the end of September, with the selection of Bridging North America, the procurement process has been completed.
We're now into the construction phase of the Gordie Howe International Bridge. The WDBA is concentrating on two areas: completing the early work on the Canadian and the U.S. sides, and getting ourselves established and ready for the construction phase.
For the supplementary estimates, the WDBA is requesting about $284 million in funding for this project. This funding is aligned with our priorities, and will cover project and construction costs in the preparatory phase on both the U.S. and Canadian sides to be ready to turn over the properties to Bridging North America, so it can do the construction.
The funding is important so that we can maintain all critical path activities and near critical path activities to make sure that we meet that 74-month schedule.
I thank you for your continued interest in the Gordie Howe International Bridge project.
My colleagues and I would be pleased to answer any questions you have.