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U.S. Ambassador to Canada Pete Hoekstra has denied that a donation from the billionaire family that owns the Ambassador Bridge is responsible for the delay in opening the new Gordie Howe Bridge.
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Global News asked Hoekstra whether a million-dollar campaign donation to MAGA Inc. from Matthew Moroun, the head of the family that has owned the bridge since the 1970s, was linked to the hold-up.
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“Absolutely not,” the outlet reports Hoekstra to have said. “The bridge was not open when it was announced a couple of weeks ago by mutual agreement of the Canadian government and the U.S. government.”
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He added: “It has nothing to do with the Morouns.”
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The Moroun family has opposed the Gordie Howe Bridge project, which could be seen as a threat to their bottom line, for years. The Department of Homeland Security says three million commercial vehicles crossed the Ambassador Bridge, which connects Windsor, Ont., and Detroit, Michigan, in 2025. But that figure is expected to drop to about 1.6 million vehicles after the Gordie Howe Bridge opens.
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The Ambassador Bridge charges commercial trucks US$15 to $20 per axle to cross each way (a typical tractor-trailer can have five axles), according to The Windsor Star.
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Hoekstra went on to tell Global News that “the Morouns operate a significant business in the United States, and in the United States, companies involved in those kinds of businesses donate to all kinds of campaigns.”
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He added: “I know that they donate to Republicans and Democrats.”
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Campaign finance reports show that Matthew Moroun made the US$1 million donation to Donald Trump’s super PAC on January 16. In February, Trump pledged to block the Gordie Howe Bridge from opening “until the United States is fully compensated for everything we have given” Canada.
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Meanwhile, Andrew MacDougall, who was director of communications for former Prime Minister Stephen Harper when the Canada-Michigan Crossing Agreement was signed, told National Post that Moroun’s “monopoly” on the busy trade corridor was one of the reasons the deal was so difficult to navigate.
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