Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for raising the Gordie Howe bridge. My first public meeting to have a new border crossing in Windsor was 1998 at Marlborough Public School. We are still anticipating the final infrastructure being built.
I do want to note a couple of things that are important. The first girder and building process took place on the parkway. It was called “girder-gate”. I actually met with and revealed, through a number of different welders, that there was a problem that took place, where they actually rejected over 200 girders.
The problem, though, and I would like the member to comment on this, is that the legislation calls for a P3, which is different from what was built for Sarnia. They had separate legislation for it. It is different from Niagara Falls. All those different things led to having a P3 as part of the operator. What is the solution going forward? That was the legislation enshrined by the Conservative government, to do a P3 and to go against the traditional process for building international border crossings that had been done in our country.
I do want to finish by giving some credit. The Conservative Party, unlike the Liberals, did not fall under the siren spell of Matty Maroun, the private American billionaire who owns the Ambassador Bridge. Conservatives have played a constructive role in this process and need to be recognized for that, because it has been a long fight.