It’s a lose-lose situation as the owners of the Fort Frances-International Falls bridge struggle to keep up with aging infrastructure, federally-mandated costs, and low traffic numbers.
During Saturday, January 11, 2024’s annual general meeting of the Rainy River District Municipal Association (RRDMA) held at the Royal Canadian Legion Branch #29 in Fort Frances, new Aazhogan Limited Partnership (LP) president and Rainy River First Nations councillor Cassandra Kaysaywaysemat provided an update to the assembled mayors, councillors and administrators on the status of the Fort Frances-International Falls bridge, which was purchased in sections in 2021 and 2022 in conjunction with the BMI Group, becoming the first Indigenous-led acquisition of an international bridge in North America. The purchase was commemorated at the time with ceremony and celebration.
Since then, however, things have been less rosy.
Kaysaywaysemat, who became Aazhogan president in September 2024 and was not a member of Rainy River First Nations council at the time the bridge was purchased, noted that the bridge had long been operated at a loss by previous owner Resolute Forest Products, who subsidized it owing to the fact it allowed them export of products into the United States, which in turn allowed them to keep crossing prices relatively the same for an extended period of time. Once acquired by Aazhogan, the stark reality of the situation has left its operation and upkeep an exercise in frustration for the First Nations group, Kaysaywaysemat said, owing to several factors.
“Currently we look at a few different things,” she explained.
“The traffic levels are obviously one of the determining factors of the pricing, and we are only sitting at approximately 70 percent from our pre-COVID traffic levels. We look monthly, and our prediction is for that 70 percent, and even that throughout this past year, three months out of the 12 we have passed that 70 percent. That could be due to a number of factors. One of the more recent factors is the change in government that will be taking place in the next couple of weeks. We could see a drastic change, and we’ve already seen a drastic change, in the dollar, which obviously affects many people’s travel to and from there, as well as COVID itself. We aren’t getting as much tourism, as I think all of Fort Frances is aware of.”
Another significant factor in the cost of the bridge is owing to the fact that, as a private entity who owns an international border crossing, Kaysaywaysemat said Aazhogan is responsible for the upkeep of the Canadian Border Services Agency (CBSA) building located at the corner of Central Avenue and Church Street.
“We pay for the maintenance and anything inside of the building itself, which is quite costly yearly,” she said.
“We’ve talked about solutions with some of the higher up governments, but nothing has come to fruition so far. It would be nice to be able to hand off some of the costs, but currently we’re not able to.”
On an annual basis, Kaysaywaysemat said the costs involved in maintaining the CBSA building are roughly $300,000 to $400,000 annually.
In spite of reduced traffic, Kaysaywaysemat said inspections have been ongoing, and engineers have been putting together a list of fixes that need to be made in the coming years. The first, which is scheduled for this summer, will be a replacement of the concrete pad on the Canadian side of the border that drivers going in and coming out of the country make use of. The project is expected to be complete by the end of summer, but will likely have an impact on crossing numbers and time. With significant additional work identified and needing to be addressed in the next few years, Kawsaywaysemat acknowledged one method of trying to come up with funding has been through raising the price of the commuter cards, a move she said sparked considerable backlash and racism towards the Aazhogan group, even as they have been working to find solutions with both the U.S. and Canadian governments. However, talks between both governments have ground to a halt due to upcoming and anticipated changes in administration and leadership, with no guarantees they will resume.
“We’re just trying to work together with local government, as well as the provincial, federal and the American governments to try to find solutions on ways we can effectively run this business without losing money, but also not keep raising the prices for our locals,” Kaysaywaysemat said.
“It’s been hard, and we don’t have any immediate solutions. There’s some short-term solutions committees, and then long-term, we’re hoping we won’t have to be raising the price on the commuter cards besides regular inflation. We know that everything in the past five years has nearly doubled, and that includes the price of construction, the price of engineering, all those things that go into trying to make the bridge a good bridge to have to travel on, because right now it’s a little rough getting on and off. We’re just hoping that some of these things in the next five years will start to level off, and that we can profit from it as well as, you know, everyone can continue use of it.”
When asked by a member of the delegation how productive talks have been with the governments, Kaysaywaysemat said she has not been contacted by anyone in her time as president, despite reaching out every so often to “poke them a little bit.” She noted even being able to offload the costs associated with the CBSA building would be a considerable burden lifted and might even have had an impact on crossing card prices, but they have thus far not been able to work out any agreement with the federal government.
A rumour alleging that Rainy River First Nations members do not pay to cross the bridge was addressed, with Kaysaywaysemat replying that all members are required to pay cross the bridge. She also noted that as much as the Aazhogan group is a partnership, only 50 percent of the partnership is represented in the district, and that 50 percent is the force working hard to keep the cost of crossing the bridge from rising even higher.
“Although there was a lot of backlash when the prices were raised, only 50 percent of that partnership received backlash,” Kaysaywaysemat said.
“The other 50 percent who owned the bridge get to sit in their offices in Toronto, and they don’t have to answer. They don’t have to see people in Safeway or Cloverleaf. They don’t get called racist remarks or saying that they’re ripping off people. When someone sits in a building in Toronto and they rip someone off, I hate to say it, but they don’t care that it’s happening. A lot of the backlash, unfortunately, is only directed at us, which we know that’s what happens. But the flip side of that is also, if it were strictly owned by a bunch of people that were sitting in Toronto and doing nothing, we’d probably be paying $200 for a card right now.”
While Kaysaywaysemat said that there’s still hope one day the bridge will become profitable, when asked by another delegate if the group had considered going so far as to threaten to close the bridge down in an attempt to force governments to come back to the table or even buy it outright, she acknowledged the group has no aspirations to keep the bridge long-term if its going to continue to be a significant burden.
“I hate to say this, but we’re not set on owning this,” Kaysaywaysemat said.
“At this point, it’s a money pit right now for us. I think at the time, and this was pre-COVID, these discussions had been going on when the numbers crossing were a lot more than they are right now. I think they thought it was a great investment at the time. But as we see now, we’re just not getting the crossings, we’re not getting the tourism.”
“It’s just unfortunate that the bridge you bought was in such poor shape,” another delegate commented.
“It was in very poor shape at the time of purchase, even,” Kaysaywaysemat replied.
