A drone view shows a vehicle crossing the $4.7-billion Gordie Howe International Bridge, connecting Windsor, Ont., and Detroit on Tuesday.Carlos Osorio/Reuters
The federal government destroyed some cost records for the Gordie Howe International Bridge long before it opened to traffic this week – a purge that was entirely legal but raises questions about Ottawa’s accountability for major projects.
A footnote in the Windsor-Detroit Bridge Authority‘s 2024-25 annual report reveals there are “excluded costs” for the $6.4-billion span connecting Windsor, Ont., and Detroit.
The disclosure, which cites the federal government’s data destruction practices, evokes the possibility that other pertinent records for this bridge may have been destroyed in Ottawa’s most recently completed and current fiscal years.
That the government thought it was appropriate to discard documents that shed light on the bridge’s costs before its official inauguration exposes a serious flaw in its records-retention policies. This is yet another stain on Ottawa’s troubled track record on transparency, serving as a cautionary tale as it funds more strategic projects of national importance.
“The Government of Canada’s record retention policy requires that records be retained for a period of seven years; disposal of records is allowed after the retention requirement has been met,” the bridge authority’s annual report states in reference to the excluded costs.
“As a result of this policy, some records from 2005 to 2009 were not retained.”
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Ottawa began paying for the bridge starting in its 2005-06 fiscal year, suggesting the deleted documents contained details about its initial outlays for the infrastructure project.
The footnote goes on to state that “Canadian contributions” – which “reflect” the costs that Ottawa has paid for the project – outlined in the destroyed documents were nearly $1-million. (For readers desiring precision, the exact amount cited is $982,000.)
“These costs have been excluded from the Statement of Canadian Contributions,” the footnote adds.
Sure, a million bucks is a pittance when considering the bridge’s multibillion-dollar price tag.
But Ottawa’s fastidiousness when it comes to razing records makes one wonder what other information was included in the now-pulverized papers and whether other project documents have also been destroyed.
The answers matter because the federal government was the sole funder for the 2.5-kilometre span, and the bridge authority, the Crown corporation in charge of the project, plans to reimburse Ottawa through future toll revenues.
Aggregate “Canadian contributions” paid as of March 31, 2025, were $5.69-billion, up from $4.53-billion in the previous year, according to the report. (The government’s fiscal year-end is March 31.)
As I stated in my column last week, the project debt that must be repaid to the government – or “total unrecouped Canadian contributions” – was more than $6.3-billion on March 31, 2025, according to the WDBA’s annual report.
The report, however, excludes other financial details associated with the project.
Its fine print spells out that neither its statement of “Canadian contributions” nor its statement of “unrecouped Canadian contributions” include revenues or expenditures related to work performed on behalf of entities that are not a part of the Canadian government. So those amounts are anyone’s guess.
The bridge authority’s non-Canadian governmental partners include Bridging North America, the State of Michigan, the Michigan Department of Transportation, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the U.S. Federal Highway Administration and the U.S. General Services Administration, according to the report.
Ottawa obviously doesn’t have enough resources to archive every meaningless scrap of paper. Nor should it.
Still, it is outrageous that federal officials saw fit to destroy documents outlining costs for a strategic infrastructure project, funded by taxpayers, before its completion.
This perverse notion that public information should only be shared with Canadians on a need-to-know basis – as determined by politicians and bureaucrats, of course – is anathema to responsible government.
Unfortunately, the reflex of both the current and previous governments has been to opt for secrecy rather than transparency on key public-policy issues, except when a public outcry forces them to change course.
That is exactly what happened with Ottawa’s bridge revenue-sharing agreement with Washington, which reads like a hastily crafted press release.
This “Secret Canada” mentality is unbecoming of a G7 country that is trying to diversify trade and generate future growth through major infrastructure projects.
It is also equally concerning that provincial governments – here’s looking at you, Ontario – are showing contempt for freedom of information laws.
Co-operation between federal and provincial governments will be essential to getting some of these initiatives, including Alberta’s proposed West Coast oil pipeline, designated as projects of national interest and, ultimately, built.
Canadians deserve to know the plans for these strategic projects and their ultimate cost.
Ottawa must modernize its records-retention strategy for major projects. After all, they can take longer than seven years to be built.
Its meticulous shredding of cost documents for the Gordie Howe International Bridge certainly doesn’t engender trust.