Prime Minister Mark Carney’s move to slash tolls on Prince Edward Island’s Confederation Bridge is poised to hand French investors more than $40 million a year in guaranteed taxpayer-funded subsidies, according to a new Budget Office report.Blacklock's Reporter says Carney announced the toll cut on July 28 without disclosing the cost to federal coffers. The report, Reducing Tolls On The Confederation Bridge, said analysts did not factor in any behavioural changes by drivers. “The main source of uncertainty relates to traffic projections,” it said.The Budget Office pegged next year’s cost at $44 million, rising to $47 million by 2029. “The Budget Office estimates the measure will increase the government’s transfer payments by $206 million over 2025 to 2030,” the report said.The $1 billion bridge was built with taxpayer money before being leased to Strait Crossing Development Inc. under a confidential contract that expires in 2032. .Partial disclosures show Strait Crossing’s annual margin sits at 54%. The company is owned by a subsidiary of Vinci Group, a French multinational with extensive holdings across the EU. All records related to tolls are sealed under the Access To Information Act until November 2026.Carney cut tolls from $50.25 per passenger vehicle to $20 effective August 1, but did not confirm that taxpayers would make up the lost revenue to French shareholders. “This is big,” he told reporters. “It’s big money.”He said the seven-year timeline for the toll cut was designed to align with the lease’s expiry. “At some point in advance of that — you don’t wait to the last minute — the federal government, whether I am there or not, will make a determination of what’s next,” Carney said, without elaborating..A 2016 Budget Office report found shareholders were guaranteed toll revenue regardless of traffic volumes. With the company privately held, no public data exists on projected net profits. However, analysts estimated them based on average returns for firms that operate major capital assets.The lease’s legal text has never been released. Cabinet said in a 2014 Inquiry Of Ministry that revenues in the first 17 years of the agreement totaled $515.4 million.“Here is a living, breathing example of risk-free spend for a corporation,” then-Liberal MP Gerry Byrne said at the time. “Why couldn’t the government just operate it themselves?”
