Sean, Come To My Office NOW

Can you imagine what Sean O'Dell would think if his Minister, John Baird, called him in for a meeting with a tone like that.

I have lots of new readers after running the Halberstadt Eh-Channel clip where he slams the Mayor for arrogance. He became overnight Windsor's answer to Susan Boyle because of that clip!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uh86yeFuFeY&feature=related

You may not know who Sean O'Dell is. He is Executive Director, Windsor Gateway Project who made this remark even though traffic is crashing lower every month:

• "Moroun will lose some traffic, but there's more than enough business to go around."

The Minister has to be furious. He was made to look like a fool in Windsor when he said:

If what he said is true, then why won't Transport Canada provide me with a copy of their investment grade traffic studies, one in 2008 and one in 2009? The obvious answer is that they do NOT dare do so!

Now I really want to help the Minister not get into a dispute with him. So here is an article that he might find of interest.

• U.S.-Canada Trade Falls
  Large broker reports deep losses; border crossings see less traffic
  
  OTTAWA — Canada’s largest customs broker, with 2,500 employees located across Canada and the United States, on Tuesday reported deep losses and stopped distributing dividends, mainly because of falling trade between the two countries.
  
  The announcement by Livingston International Income Fund followed a pattern also recorded Tuesday by Statistics Canada, the national statistical agency, showing a significant fall in exports and imports between the U.S. and Canada in March and during the first quarter this year. These are seen as well in cross-border commercial traffic recorded in both periods by operators of four of the six biggest U.S.-Canada border crossings.
  
  Livingston International, headquartered in Toronto, announced revenue and interest income of $51 million, a 26 percent drop from the $70 million earned in the first quarter last year.
  
  Livingston recorded a net loss of $15 million for the quarter, compared with a net gain of $7.1 million in the 2008 period. Livingston is a customs broker/forwarder/transportation and logistics provider.
  
  The company said its problem was that "the key factors that drive our business, economic activity and the level of international trade, have declined." It cut off paying distributions to unitholders and secured, only the day before, extensions on its debts to creditors at higher interest rates.
  
  Tuesday morning, Statistics Canada reported that Canadian exports to the United States decreased 4.1 percent in March while imports decreased 4.7 percent. Canada’s trade surplus with the U.S. remained at $3.1 billion in March, as it was in February. Canada’s volume of imports and exports with the rest of the world declined in March, imports more than exports.
  
  Five days ago, the busiest U.S.-Canada border crossing, one of the busiest in the world, the Ambassador Bridge between Detroit and Windsor, Ontario, recorded a 30.2 percent drop in truck traffic across it for the first four months of the year — 720,862 goods-carrying vehicles versus 1,033,047 vehicles in the 2008 period. April traffic was down 29 percent from April of last year.
  
  The report by the Public Border Operators Association, on Ontario border crossings with New York and Michigan, covers four of the six busiest U.S.-Canada border crossings. The second busiest, the Blue Water Bridge, was down 24.15 percent for the first four months versus the 2008 period, and the two others were down 17.4 percent and 21.4 percent.

2015 for a new DRIC bridge to be completed. They will be lucky if it can be started by 2025 or so when MDOT thought a new bridge might be needed.

As I said before, their 2013 "goal" has to be viewed with suspicion. Should that date now be considered as nothing more than a cruel joke on the public by an insensitive Government designed as a ploy to prevent the demand for the Enhancement Project bridge to be built!

Someone in Parliament needs to ask the question if this is how Government is supposed to operate in our Canadian Democratic society.

As L. Ian MacDonald wrote in The Gazette about Kevin Lynch leaving as Head of the Privy Council, something that applies with the big Windsor surprise:

• "But the way the announcement was packaged, and the timing of it, was profoundly troubling... Yet it's typical of the manner in which this PMO operates - it doesn't have a sense of occasion, and it doesn't have any class."