By Maria Cheng <\/p>\n
OTTAWA, July 16 (Reuters) – Canada will not share with the United States toll revenues from a new $4.7 million bridge connecting Windsor, Ontario, and Detroit, Michigan, until Canada recoups its \u200cinitial investment, Prime Minister Mark Carney said on Thursday. <\/p>\n
The delayed opening of the Gordie Howe bridge, \u200cpaid for by Canada, has increased tensions and incurred economic costs for both the United States and Canada at a time the two \u200bneighbours are also trying to work out an updated trade agreement. <\/p>\n
Last week, U.S. President Donald Trump said he had secured “a much better deal” for the U.S. to allow the bridge’s opening, set for July 27. Political opponents criticized Carney for caving to the U.S. after American officials said they “went from getting no revenue” to getting significant revenue. <\/p>\n
But at \u200ca press briefing on Thursday, Carney said \u2060the underlying agreement with Michigan on the Gordie Howe bridge remained unchanged from 2012, when Canada agreed to front the cost of the bridge. According to that deal, Canada \u2060was entitled to collect all toll profits until it recovered the costs of its bridge investment. <\/p>\n
“Any sharing of the toll revenue won’t happen until all of the debt is repaid,” said Carney. He added that Canada would split net revenues \u200bwith \u200bthe U.S. during the first 15 years after operational costs, \u200bincluding maintenance and snow removal. <\/p>\n
“We expect that \u200cafter those costs, for the first few years, net revenue will be modest,” he said. “When the splitting begins, all of the portions that go to the U.S. government will be reinvested in economic development.” <\/p>\n
The details of the agreement between Canada and the U.S. have not been publicly released. Two sources told Reuters a deal had been reached last week and that the U.S. would get 50% of toll revenue profits and that it would be \u200cable to veto any toll hike 10% higher than current \u200btolls. <\/p>\n
Fen Hampson, a professor of international affairs at Carleton University, said \u200bthe deal was a victory for Canada. <\/p>\n
“If you \u200bdo the math on when Canada will be splitting the revenues, there won’t be \u200cvery much left to split.” He said it \u200bwas to Carney’s advantage that \u200bAmericans believed they had forced a Canadian concession. <\/p>\n
“It’s better to let Trump think he’s gotten a win, otherwise he can be very vindictive.” <\/p>\n
Opposition Conservative Member of Parliament Shuvaloy Majumdar called it a “terrible deal” for Canada in \u200ba letter sent to the government \u200clast week. <\/p>\n
“Canadians deserve the full agreement, a complete accounting of its costs and clear answers about \u200bwhat was given away,” Majumdar wrote. <\/p>\n
(Reporting by Maria Cheng, Additional reporting by David Ljunggren in Ottawa \u200band David Shepardson in Washington; Editing by Nia Williams) <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Maria Cheng OTTAWA, July 16 (Reuters) – Canada will not share with the United States toll revenues…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":132165,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[17,32774,162,31974,111,42268],"class_list":["post-132164","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-canada","tag-canada","tag-delayed-opening","tag-donald-trump","tag-gordie-howe-bridge","tag-mark-carney","tag-toll-revenue"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132164","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=132164"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132164\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/132165"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=132164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=132164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=132164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}