Transport committee  My name is Dan Stamper. I'm president of the Ambassador Bridge.

Transport committee  Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you to all the members of the committee for this much desired opportunity to speak today on the proposed legislation governing international border crossings between Canada and the United States. First, let me say we are concerned with the intent

Transport committee  The State of Michigan held hearings similar to what you're holding here today over a period of about a month and a half, took testimony from witnesses, and within a week of finishing that testimony both the House and Senate passed resolutions taking away funding for the direct st

Transport committee  I called Mr. Hicks when I read Bill C-3 and asked what the intent of Bill C-3 was. I got an explanation that the deputy minister was concerned about security and...maintenance, health, and safety issues. I said to Mr. Hicks that Bill C-3 went way beyond that and asked why he di

Transport committee  Politically, the State of Michigan has withdrawn funding for the DRIC. I don't know what the ultimate reaction of that is with the U.S. Federal Highway Administration, with Transport Canada, and with the Ontario Ministry of Transportation. It was a four-party effort. I believe

Transport committee  That's correct, sir.

Transport committee  As I said in my testimony, the same people who are asking, through this legislation, to govern fees and to govern tolls are also competitors of ours. They own and operate bridges. They compete with us--so we see it as a way to control not only the bridges that they own, but also

Transport committee  Yes. There is an article towards the end of the bill that grandfathers an operator. If you're an operator the day before this legislation goes in, you're an operator the day after. But it does not grandfather any of the other issues, and given that we have 77 years invested and h

Transport committee  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 woul

Transport committee  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 chos

Transport committee  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 gove

Transport committee  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 t

Transport committee  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

Transport committee  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 materi

Transport committee  All our competitors have customs officers at their border crossings. We supply, free of charge, all the facilities for Canada to work at our bridge, all their offices, all their booths, all the janitorial work, and all the utilities--at our expense, 100%. Whatever they ask for, w