The billionaire U.S. owners of the busiest land border crossing in North America turned to a high-powered lobbying firm run by former top aides to Prime Minister Stephen Harper in recent years, records show. 

The Moroun family, which has controlled the Ambassador Bridge connecting Ontario and Michigan for decades, has aggressively opposed the construction of the nearby Gordie Howe International Bridge, which, once open, is expected to shrink their toll revenue. 

That opposition seemed to hit a breakthrough last month, when U.S. President Donald Trump threatened to block the opening of the new, publicly owned span. The threat came after Matthew Moroun reportedly landed a meeting with a key member of Trump’s cabinet.

But less is known about the Moroun’s influence efforts in the Canadian capital. Now, a CBC Windsor analysis of federal lobbying records shows that in the years before the Morouns amped up their lobbying in Washington, they made a similar effort in Ottawa.

In 2022, the Ambassador bridge company hired a firm called Wellington Advocacy to arrange discussions with public officials about “efficient access and operational matters.”

The firm is run by several former senior Harper officials, including ex-chief of staff Ray Novak — officials who would have worked closely with the prime minister while he championed the publicly funded Gordie Howe bridge project.

Ian Stedman, an expert in government ethics and accountability at York University, says he isn’t surprised that Wellington Advocacy would take on a client whose interests might be the opposite of those held by the Harper officials while in government.

“The job is to try to influence government behaviour and government policy, and you do that on behalf of your clients. You don’t generally stick with a particular position on an issue for the rest of your career,” he said. 

“You eat what you kill, so to speak.” 

There is no indication that the lobbying had any tangible effect on public officials on this side of the border, where political support for the new bridge is broad.

Still, the analysis lays bare another chapter in the powerful Moroun family’s political influence efforts — at a time when those efforts in the U.S. are under intense scrutiny.

Neither Wellington Advocacy nor Matthew Moroun responded to requests for comment. 

13 communication reports over 2 years

The Canadian lobbying disclosures show the Detroit International Bridge Company — the Ambassador Bridge’s parent company — has three people actively registered to lobby on its behalf, all of whom work for Wellington Advocacy. Matthew Moroun is listed as an individual with a “direct interest” in the lobbying outcome.

One of those lobbyists is Andrea van Vugt, Wellington’s chief operating officer and trade practice lead. She previously served as Harper’s foreign affairs and trade advisor, and is listed online as global director at Harper & Associates, the former prime minister’s consulting firm. 

Wellington Advocacy co-founders Novak and Jeremy Hunt are also listed as corporate directors at Harper & Associates.

Though run and co-founded by Harper-era Tories, Wellington Advocacy has connections to other parties as well. Cassandra Almeida, one of the lobbyists registered to work on behalf of the Ambassador Bridge, is a former Liberal staffer, and Tom Mulcair, the former leader of the NDP, is on the firm’s strategic advisory board.

Unlike the U.S. federal lobbying registry, the Canadian database does not require lobbyists to list their income from specific clients, so it’s unclear how much Wellington Advocacy was paid.

But between 2022 and 2024, the firm filed more than a dozen monthly communication reports, which lobbyists must submit when they’ve had “oral and arranged communication” with a public office holder. Van Vugt is listed as the lobbyist on all of them.

‘It’s a sleazy business’: former MP

The reports show the lobbyists met or spoke with a range of MPs as well as bureaucrats at the CBSA, Transport Canada, and more. 

Those MPs included the NDP’s Brian Masse, who communicated with Wellington Advocacy in 2023, per a report. Masse, who represented Windsor’s west end in the House of Commons for more than 20 years, says it was actually Matthew Moroun who asked for a meeting. 

He says he agreed and met with Moroun and two other people he doesn’t remember at the parliamentary restaurant in Ottawa. 

Masse, a longtime supporter of the Gordie Howe bridge, said he believes the project came up at the start of the meeting. “But they pretty well knew where I stood on it. I’m basically the face of all the public officials in the past who have worked on a new border crossing, from the beginning to the end,” he said. “So if we did [talk about it], it was agree to disagree.”

He says the Ambassador Bridge team then pitched him on a plan to elevate Huron Church Road — the six-lane thoroughfare that cuts through Windsor’s west end, and connects the bridge to the 401 — to make it more like a highway. Masse said he shut the idea down.

“Obliterate the community is really what it would do,” he said. “They want the public to pay for or finance in partial the destruction of their own community and neighbourhoods, and it defeats the whole purpose of why we’re actually building the Gordie Howe International Bridge to begin with.”

The forthcoming crossing is directly connected to Highway 401 by the Herb Gray Parkway, a $1.4-billion infrastructure project built to route traffic to the new bridge.

Masse said he used the meeting as an opportunity to urge Moroun to clean up properties his company owns near their bridge. But they didn’t follow through, Masse says.

Like Stedman, the associate professor at York, Masse says he isn’t surprised that Wellington Advocacy is run by former top Harper staff. 

“Lobbying is a sleazy business. It’s one of the reasons I didn’t become a lobbyist after I left politics. I chose to go back with the not-for-profit sector and to work on a — I guess a real job,” he said. “Lobbying is just essentially getting access for people to politicians and we end up paying for it, all of us do, because it’s baked into the prices of the cost of doing business, and Ottawa’s full of it and Washington’s full of it.”

Unclear what discussions with other MPs were about

The communication reports also show Wellington Advocacy was in contact with other local MPs at the time. Between 2023 and 2024, they met or spoke with then-Liberal MP Irek Kusmierczyk three times. 

Kusmierczyk, who represented Windsor—Tecumseh up until last year, did not respond to repeated interview requests, so it’s unclear what, exactly, they spoke about. The communication reports only list general topics, such as economic development, international trade, and transportation.

The firm also communicated with Conservative MP Chris Lewis, who represents the riding of Essex just outside Windsor, twice in 2023, per the reports. 

When asked about the topic of conversation — and whether it included the Gordie Howe bridge — a spokesperson for Lewis did not provide details.

“I note the meeting you referenced occurred in 2023 and I can confirm that the threats we are facing today regarding the Gordie Howe bridge and the unjustified economic attacks from the Americans were not present at the time, so they were therefore not possibly discussed,” chief of staff Marnie Pouget wrote in an email. 

CBC Windsor clarified that the question was about the Gordie Howe project generally, not the recent dispute with the U.S. president. She did not respond to follow-up questions about the nature of the conversations.

Colin Bird, the Canadian consul general in Detroit, also communicated twice with Wellington Advocacy, the reports show. He did not respond to a request for comment, either.

Reports mean system is working: expert

Stedman says regardless of whether someone disagrees with a lobbyist’s work, it’s a “legitimate activity.” He said governments should listen to all perspectives, including corporate ones, then “form good policy” using evidence and research. 

He also said the fact that the public lobbying documents exist should be reassuring.

“Whether we agree with who’s influencing them or how hard they’re trying, different story. But the fact that those registrations are there and they’re being filed and they’re there for us to see, that’s very positive,” he said. “That’s a sign of a healthy democracy.”