By Bob Rae

July 17, 2026

This piece is a Policy re-post of an article first published in The Toronto Star on July 14, 2026.

The agreement between our government and the Trump administration to allow the opening of the Gordie Howe bridge that links Windsor and Detroit is just the latest twist in a long saga.

After much delay and dithering, the bridge was scheduled to be open for business on June 15th after a planned ribbon cutting on June 12th. That plan was shelved on June 11th.

Scissors down, elbows back up.

A new deal has been patched together, and now the opening is July 27th.

Elbows down, scissors back up.

To understand what is happening, we have to go back to a terrible decision in the 1920s by both the U.S. and Canadian governments to pass laws allowing for a monopoly to be granted to a private company to build and run a toll bridge spanning the Detroit River. The original owner of the project, Joseph Bower, went bankrupt during the Depression, and the company then went public.

The Ambassador Bridge was hugely profitable. In 1979, it was purchased by the late Grosse Pointe billionaire Matty Moroun, whose family have taken full advantage of their ownership of a lucrative choke point in controlling trade between the two countries. In its own way, it’s a parallel with the Strait of Hormuz.

Efforts by both governments to work out a more reasonable arrangement were always rejected by both the past and current generations of the Moroun family, who are to this day shrewd lobbyists and keen litigators.

Millions were spent on court proceedings on both sides of the border, as governments in the early part of the 20th century finally realized that there had to be a better way to allow trucks and cars to cross a border point where hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of trade happens every year.

In 2004, the Paul Martin-led federal government proposed a second, publicly owned bridge, and Stephen Harper’s government continued with this plan, eventually working out a deal in 2012 whereby Canada would build and operate the project, collect the tolls that would allow us to get our money back and thereafter share the proceeds with the governments of Michigan and the United States. This is the deal to which the American government agreed. It was a creative and fair solution to a problem that couldn’t be allowed to continue.

The bridge was officially named after Gordie Howe, one of Canada’s greatest hockey heroes, who played for many years for the Detroit Red Wings — a decision announced just before his death. In a notable sidebar to this drama, it was Gordie who made “elbows up” famous long before it was adopted as a catchphrase for Canada’s response to Donald Trump’s annexation threats. I can remember watching him play on our black and white television on Saturday nights.

The construction of the bridge was delayed because of constant lawsuits by companies owned by the Moroun family, who did everything they could to keep their monopoly on the transit point. That meant that the cost of the project continued to go up — finally costing $5.6 billion — and the opening was delayed. Construction took more than 10 years.

Who is now causing the delay in the opening of the bridge? Surprise, surprise, President Trump didn’t like the deal. He wants Canada to hand over more money, and sooner — and has used the leverage of the moment to extract cash out of Canadian taxpayers.

As in Guys and Dolls, the dice are blank. Like Big Jule, Donald Trump decides what the numbers are because he can’t win any other way.

American Ambassador Pete Hoekstra says that “politics has nothing to do with this,” and I actually agree with him.

This is not about politics as we have often understood it. We are only talking about money and power.

Since, for this president, everything is a transaction, he sees this as yet another opportunity to “make a better deal,” even if it means changing the terms of an agreement after it’s been made.

As the president places no value on the relationship with Canada, treating us the way Vladimir Putin treats Belarus, he is exercising leverage — or in other words, a shakedown. If these delays happen to ensure cash flow to the private monopoly, so be it. Just a coincidence.

Another coincidence: Stratford audiences attending Anthony Cimolino’s last season as festival director are rolling in the aisles at the great Frank Loesser musical Guys and Dolls. In the play, mobster and confidence man Big Jule prefers to shoot craps with blank, “undotted” dice so he can decide who wins and who loses.

Someone should write a musical about the saga of the bridges between Detroit and Windsor. The chicanery and self-dealing would be there for all to see.

As in Guys and Dolls, the dice are blank. Like Big Jule, Donald Trump decides what the numbers are because he can’t win any other way. And the price has been paid by Canadian workers in lost jobs and lost opportunities, and by Canadian taxpayers who are paying interest on a vital asset that we borrowed money to build, on the premise that the cash flow from tolls would pay down the debt.

In refusing to renew CUSMA, and with the extortion tactics delaying the Gordie Howe Bridge opening, Mr. Trump is telling Canadians how he thinks the game has to be played.

In his Davos speech, Mark Carney told the world that the old order was gone, and we were now living “in the midst of a rupture”. The bilateral saga of the bridges is open proof of that. And therein lies the challenge.

We are told by White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller that the exercise of raw power is the only rule that matters. That is the view expressed clearly in the December U.S. National Security Review where the meaning of “America First” is laid out clearly for the world to see. It isn’t pretty.

Those of us who warned that this was deadly serious, and unlike anything we have seen since Franklin Roosevelt was elected President in 1932, were encouraged to keep whistling past the graveyard. “Nothing to see here, just a little throat clearing,” was the reaction among some. But the prime minister is right when he reminds us that “nostalgia is not a strategy.”

The necessary elements of a Canadian response are becoming clearer, and we need to keep building stronger alliances with our reasonable American friends — and we do have them — as well as with other countries who, like us, need to wake up to the fact that we are dealing with a very different U.S administration, and a president who no longer has guardrails or handlers, only amplifiers.

Policy Columnist Bob Rae teaches and writes on law and public policy. He is the Visitor of Massey College, a Distinguished Fellow at the Munk School at the University of Toronto, a Senior Fellow at the Forum of Federations, and a Matthews Fellow in public policy at Queen’s University. He served as Ontario’s 21st Premier, interim leader of the Liberal Party of Canada, and Canada’s Ambassador to the United Nations.