Gordie Howe international bridge project prompts calls to Buy Canadian

Union leaders, opposition MPs and advocates for Canada's steel producers say they're concerned that a portion of a $5.7 billion international bridge project between Detroit and Windsor, Ont., could be built using raw materials produced outside North America.

The Gordie Howe International Bridge, a bilateral effort to ease bottlenecks at the single-busiest trade corridor across the Canada-U.S. border, is currently scheduled for completion in 2024, more than 20 years after the idea was first proposed. 

Because the bridge is being financed almost entirely by the Canadian federal government, the Obama administration agreed in 2012 to exempt the project from Buy American procurement rules, and instead permit the use of either Canadian or American iron and steel.

But two components of the project on the Canadian side of the Detroit River — a sprawling customs plaza and an "approach bridge" to connect the crossing with the Rt. Hon. Herb Gray Parkway, a new extension of Highway 401 — are not subject to the 2012 waiver, which means the materials for those parts can be sourced elsewhere. 

"Because Canada doesn't have legislation like the Buy American Act, we don't have those same requirements just to source locally within our own country. So there is the ability to source from outside of Canada for those two components." 

The authority says the 53-hectare Canadian port of entry, an area roughly the size of 130 football fields, will be the single-largest port facility along the Canada-U.S. border, and one of the largest in North America, once it is completed. 

It includes inbound and outbound border inspection facilities for both passenger and commercial vehicles and maintenance facilities, as well as an array of booths to allow for the collection of tolls — the project's primary avenue for recouping the multi-billion-dollar price tag.

Because it is being financed as a public-private partnership, or P3, detailed cost breakdowns of the various components of the project are not publicly available. But as a point of comparison, the cost to Michigan of building a new approach to the crossing on the U.S. side has been pegged at about $230 million US. 

Jose Luis Mendez, the project manager on the Canadian side for Bridging North America (BNA), the authority's private-sector partner, confirmed in a statement that North American iron and steel has already been procured for the main span as well as the customs facility on the U.S. side. 

The procurement of steel for the Canadian port of entry and approach bridge "is still ongoing but should be complete in the near future," Mendez said. He said BNA "is considering both sources from within America and Canada and outside of those two countries."

He said BNA "is unable to comment further at this time on remaining procurement activities due to commercially sensitive reasons."

Marty Warren, sworn in just Tuesday as the new leader of the Canadian wing of the United Steelworkers union, said he doesn't understand why the federal government didn't insist on the use of Canadian materials.

After all, he noted, Canada is being forced more and more to navigate the made-in-America procurement rules that now seem to be standard operating procedure for the country's largest trading partner. 

"It's disappointing to me that our Liberal government hasn't stepped up and said, at least, 'That portion of that project is going to be Canadian steel,'" Warren said in an interview.