Ontario Chamber applauds forward step for Detroit River International Crossing

TORONTO - The Ontario Chamber of Commerce welcomes yesterday's announcement by the Canadian Detroit River International Crossing (DRIC) study team which identifies the preferred access road to the new international gateway crossing the Detroit River. The Windsor-Essex Parkway will provide the region with a modern, state-of-the-art connection that provides an opportunity for international traffic to move in a free-flow manner, off local streets. It will be an enormous improvement over the current and untenable stop and go situation.

"Today's announcement provides one more critical step towards meeting the timelines required to get the new international crossing operational in 2013, a deadline we cannot afford to miss," says Len Crispino, President & CEO of the Ontario Chamber of Commerce. "The Windsor-Essex Parkway is the right solution to enable us to move forward quickly on this matter of national and international urgency."

Secure but efficient trade and tourism is vital to the continued prosperity of our country, and to our relations with our largest trading partner. But it's also a crucial factor in the attraction of new investment.

It's in the interests of both Canada and the U.S. to immediately address the impediments to trade in order to improve our position in the global competition for trade and investment. We encourage continued progress on this critically important initiative and will continue to support the DRIC study team and the Border Transportation Partnership as they move forward in identifying the end-to-end solution.

The Ontario business community is anxious to see the construction of a new bridge in Windsor begin immediately. With the announcement of The Windsor-Essex Parkway we're looking forward to seeing the ribbon cutting in 2013.

The OCC represents 60,000 businesses through 160 local Chambers of Commerce and Boards of Trade, and has been Ontario's business advocate since 1911. Its advocacy and policy initiatives focus on six areas key to the economic well-being of the province: health; education; energy; finance & taxation; transportation & infrastructure; and border issues.