Category: New

#13 – Rebuffed again Mr. Brown?

by Peter Lowry

Babel’s earnest Member of Parliament, Mr. Brown, must have very thick skin. Every time he comes up in a pile of manure, he seems to busy himself digging into it to see if someone left him a pony. He recently took on a job usually left by politicos to the spin doctors. In a July 10 news release on his web site, Mr. Brown claims success for his local petition to help save CTVglobemedia’s ‘A’ Channel in Babel. In making such a claim, he ignores the advice of members of the Conservative caucus who serve on the House of Commons’ Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage.

It is possible that he never read the Conservative minority report from the committee that was issued last month. It is even more likely that he did not know that the committee was studying the problems of local television while he was getting an unnecessary petition together for A Channel. Mind you, he only got a few hundred signatures on it. In a riding with a population of some 135,000, you would think the sitting Member of Parliament would be able to get thousands of signatures.

But not Mr. Brown. Maybe, his constituents are tiring of his constant in-your-face campaigning. Or maybe, he was too far out of his depth with the subject matter. Does he think there is a nice warm feeling to having a television station here in the riding? The station is just one of the hundreds of channels available to cable and satellite users in the market area. His caucus colleagues, who heard hundreds of hours of submissions from industry experts on the subject, indicated in their report their “most fervent and rigorous opposition to any potential fee–for–carriage system, either negotiated or imposed.” In this, they were just more strident than the majority report. The opposition members of the committee of the House had also rejected taxing cable and satellite users to support local stations.

Mr. Brown’s little victory came from last week’s report from the Canadian Radio Television-Telecommunications Commission (CRTC). The CRTC had done what it had already told the committee it would do. It has instructed the major carriers of television signals—cable and satellite providers—that they had to sit down with their counterparts at the local broadcasting outlets and negotiate a solution to the ‘fee-for-carriage’ argument. There are many observers of the industry who would like to be able to serve the tea and crumpets for those social events. The only problem is the threat from the CRTC that if the signal distributors and the local outlets do not play nice and find an equitable solution, the CRTC will step in and find a solution for them.

If Mr. Brown thinks that is a win, it shows how little he knows. He does not seem to understand that money A Channel might extract from the cable and satellite companies will come from the pockets of the voters in his riding, the users of cable and satellite services. While the famously avaricious Lord Thompson once claimed that a television station licence is a licence for the holder to print money, modern broadcasters are making their money from specialty channels, targeted audiences and production of programming. We are already contributing part of our cable and satellite fees to producers of Canadian programs. Nothing is free.

But bear in mind, times are changing. Television is working with new technologies in a world linked by satellites. Programmers try to outdo each other to build audiences. Some of their ideas are brilliant and some are disgusting. It is the viewer watching the programs who determines where we are going.

There are times when we should take a tip from the classic 1976 movie Network and tell Mr. Brown and A Channel and the cable and satellite providers that we are ‘mad as hell and we’re not going to take this any more.’

And then we can go play golf on our Wii.

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# 12 – Canada’s middle class and the politics of inclusion

by Peter Lowry

Harper was late again at the Italian G8 meeting. He seems to take longer than any of the other major world rulers to get himself ready for photo ops. Either his logistics people are asleep at the switch or it is just getting harder to comb his hair over as he ages. Or maybe, as an Ottawa writer noted several months ago, Canada’s Prime Minister has discovered middle-class Canadians and thinks tardiness is a middle-class characteristic. He sees this middle-class thing as novel and new (the reporter, not Mr. Harper). Frankly, the reporter seems slow. Canadian politicians have been fighting over the hearts and minds of Canada’s middle class for as long as we have been able to attribute middle-class characteristics to some of Canada’s population.

The reporter actually thinks Mr. Harper should have an advantage with this group because he is himself so middle class. Wrong. Mr. Harper is a right-wing ideologue and the last thing he would ever consider himself to be is middle class. He is likely to consider that description pejorative. He knows himself as a superior person whom others should know to follow.

At the same time, the reporter says that certain pollsters and Mr. Harper are attempting to position Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff as “a stuffy intellectual.” Wrong again. While Ignatieff is unquestionably intellectual, he also has a wonderfully wry sense of humour, a self-deprecating style and a very real concern for people that Mr. Harper can never match.

It really is quite funny when the reporter tells readers that Mr. Harper shows that he is really middle-class by having two young children. The news media show clips of him taking his son to play hockey. He is as stiff with his children as he is in the boardroom. He should have taken a lesson from the upper-class Pierre Trudeau, who never allowed his sons to be part of political campaigning, other than the requisite picture for the annual Christmas card.

The reporter builds all this silliness on Barack Obama’s win in the United States last November. That win was achieved, the reporter tells us, by Obama using a positive and inclusive message. The reporter was not up on American history nor aware of the power of new media. It was a lesson Obama learned from the last of the truly patrician American presidents: Franklin Roosevelt. FDR built his politics of inclusion on a new medium of communications of his era: radio. Obama built his inclusion with the new media of this era: the Internet,

When you refer to the politics of inclusion, you are not really talking about the middle class. The middle class of society is hardly a voting block. The politics of inclusion crosses the economic and intellectual lines in society and invites broad participation. Roosevelt built a path out of the Great Depression for Americans with the “New Deal.” Barack Obama opened doors to blacks, Hispanics and white Americans frustrated with the George W. Bush regime with the simple words: “Yes we can.”

More important than the actual words was the positive nature of the message. In an era of vicious, negative attack advertising in politics, Obama reversed the trend. He left the sneering insults to the late night talk shows and the news media and took the high road. He was respectful but firm with his Republican opponent and he kept looking better and better throughout the American election.

Conversely, the campaign in Canada in October was awash in a constant turmoil with scurrilous attacks and mixed messages that put the Canadian voter on a seesaw. The refusal of Stephen Harper to admit there were problems with the economy was to put his campaign in direct conflict with reality. He won a narrow victory in the end by staying with his message and emphasizing the weaknesses of Liberal Stéphane Dion.

But, with the self destructive ideological approach of Stephen Harper, nobody should give this government much time before Michael Ignatieff brings it down. Ignatieff has already laid the groundwork in Ottawa of ensuring that his caucus is not the cause of any disrespect and nastiness in the House of Commons. He is determined that Harper is not going to pull him down into the gutter politics that destroyed his predecessor Stéphane Dion. The difference between the two liberals is that while they are both professors and intellectuals, Ignatieff is also very much a politician.

Canadians are going to start to remember a slogan that was popular after the Great Depression of the 1930s. The slogan is simply “Liberal times are good times.”

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#11 – Flaherty’s floundering financial fix.

by Peter Lowry

There are no more passing report cards for Jim Flaherty. Harper’s finance minister is toast. On November 27 last year, he brought the Harper government to its knees with an ill-conceived economic statement that ignored reality. Given a reprieve by the Governor General, he brought in a budget at the end of January that made everybody choke. All it did was ensure our federal government would fall deeper in debt. He produced a budget that lacked planning and focus and did no measureable good for anybody.

In fact, the budget did more wrong than right. It trivialized the serious flaws in Canada’s employment insurance and, in doing so, kept funds from the people in the most desperate need. All his tax cuts could do was put the country deeper into debt. They did nothing to solve the immediate problems: the need for job creation and financial stimulus.

The budget made much of a tax credit amounting to 15 per cent of the costs of some limited home improvements that homeowners carry out this year. You get the tax credit next year. Home Depot or Rona can beat that deal any time with just some sharp marketing and give you money back at the same time.

The municipal infrastructure support plan has been a bad political joke. It is not enough and Flaherty failed to solve the basic problems of how to get the money moving immediately to where needed. Besides, infrastructure programs do not receive funding until announced in the community at least six times, by the local Conservative politician. If you do not have one of those people representing your riding, you can hardly expect very much largess from Ottawa.

The only hope for Flaherty’s foolishness was that President Obama’s rescue plan for America would cover all of North America. It did not as Americans, once again, proved that their idea of free trade is not fair trade. We have to work hard on the Americans to convince them that we are all in the same boat. We also have to cheer on Obama’s recovery program because when he gets the U.S. out of the deep doo-doo, it will pull our economy with it. And that is reality.

Meanwhile, Flaherty has missed every opportunity to soften the short-term recession hit for Canadians. We need to get cash money into the hands of people who are going to spend it immediately. Any program that can do that is worthwhile. All the rest are lies. While watching details on that January budget on television, Canadians were seeing commercials touting the Conservative’s tax-free savings plan. Our taxes (or deficit) pay for those television commercials that encouraged Canadians to do what is the most harmful thing in our current economic situation: put their money in banks. And they have been doing it in record numbers.

What Flaherty’s budget did accomplish was to wash out the proposed coalition of the Liberals and NDP supported by the Bloc Québécois. It was hardly that the budget was too persuasive. If anything, it was because the budget was so bad. The Liberal’s Michael Ignatieff saw that he did not need the coalition. Without the threat to political funding that was in the earlier economic statement, Ignatieff could let the Conservatives destroy themselves. Over the summer, Canadians will continue to get ample evidence that Harper’s government has no answers. This fall or, at the latest, early next year, everybody will be ready for an election. It is hardly the best solution for Canadians but Ignatieff needed the time to get his party organized and, at the same time, let the voters see the ineptness of the Conservatives.

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The ubiquitous Mr. Brown, Member of Parliament

by Peter Lowry

Mr. Brown is a ward heeler. Ward heelers (not healers) originated as minor American political functionaries during the 19th Century. Their role was to do the neighbourhood work for the political bosses and their organizations. The fact that a ward heeler of Mr. Brown’s insignificance is also a Member of Canada’s Parliament is a regrettable aspect of modern Canadian politics.

With the trends towards fewer voters bothering to cast a vote, the lack of good media coverage of local candidates, the concentration of the broadcast media on leaders and their policies and the disappearing all-candidate meetings in the ridings, a ward heeler such as Mr. Brown becomes the ideal candidate for his party. The only problem is it leaves him unable to properly fulfill either role. He is neither an effective Member of Parliament nor a particularly good ward heeler.

While supposedly busy in the nation’s capitol looking after the affairs of our country, Mr. Brown is busy tweeting and twittering, on his web site, connecting through Facebook, sending out news releases written in offices of the Prime Minister and cabinet members and looking for opportunities to expand his advertising around Babel. All this effort is supposed to make the voters in Babel believe he is busy working for them. At the same time, there is little going on in Babel in which his possible participation is not evaluated in terms of potential votes.

It needs noting that some think the term ‘ward heeler’ as insulting. I do not. They can be very useful people. Good ward heelers are hard to find. I have known some outstanding ones over the years. And, in some circumstances, it is possible to be an elected politician and a good ward heeler at the same time. I think the best I ever met was a provincial politician named Allan Grossman. His advantage was that the Ontario Legislature was almost in the middle of his riding. Allan served his constituents in the Legislature for 20 years. His son, Larry Grossman, tried to carry on his father’s legacy in the Legislature and riding but he was thin gruel compared to his old man and soon left politics.

Allan Grossman knew his voters, knew their wants and needs, and he looked after them. I once served on a charitable board with him and I was constantly impressed with his ability to turn complex political concerns into practical solutions for individual human needs. It was a delight to be able to work with him. His secret was that he cared.

In contrast, my impression is that Mr. Brown spreads himself far too thin across this electoral district to care for anyone other than himself. His voters find him a will-o-the-wisp, flitting from photo-op to photo-op on an itinerary of hypocrisy. There appears to be no one thing he stands for or opposes. There do not seem to be any contentious issues on which he takes a stand. (That is unless his party leader has already said it.)

He does take credit for the work of others. Along with all other active politicos in Babel, he takes full credit for the GO trains that now service Babel commuters wishing to travel to and from the big smoke. He does not take responsibility for the predawn train whistles that are raising the ire of residents in the south of Babel. It makes no difference to him that GO trains are the responsibility of the provincial government. You would think he personally winds up their rubber bands and starts them on their travels every morning.

Less understandable is his involvement in the province’s health care problems. While I will write more about his health care moves at a later date, his involvement in the local hospital provides lots of photo-ops but it is hard to tell whether he is helping or hindering the hospital staff in achieving their objectives.

Mr. Brown spends a great deal of money between elections keeping his name recognition high and avoiding the spending restrictions in force during elections. In an era of serious recession, money seems to be no problem for the ubiquitous Mr. Brown.

Mr. Brown looks like he was trained for the job of MP. The only problem is that he seems to have nothing to contribute to the job but another vote for his party. He struggled through Ontario’s easiest law school in Windsor, tried French immersion and served a couple of non-descript terms on city council before assuming the Conservative banner under Stephen Harper. He took no special knowledge of Barrie, national or foreign affairs to Ottawa. He makes no contribution in parliament to the betterment of our country. Everything he does is in aid of getting him re-elected. Given a strong candidate for the Liberals and a solid campaign by Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff in the coming election, Mr. Brown`s days as a member of parliament will be history.

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The wonderful informality of Babel.

by Peter Lowry

“Wear a hat when making sales calls on Spadina and never wear a tie north of Highway 7.” These were among the rules sales people used to follow when doing business out of the big city. I always thought the tie rule was very sensible and when I moved north of Highway 7 to Babel, I stopped wearing ties.

Oh, I keep a couple ties in the back of the closet for those times I have to go down to the city for a funeral, wedding or lunch at someone’s club, or other stuffy occasion. I have even pointed out to my wife the one to give to the undertaker, should the need ever arise. (I have always been intending to burn that tie. I guess that is the one time you can be caught dead wearing it.)

The first time I went to a funeral in Babel, it was certainly an eye opener. My wife demanded I wear a suit. I finally agreed but it was not until we were in the car that she realized I had put on the suit but deliberately forgot the tie. She did not demand I turn around but things were a bit frosty.

I knew funerals are different in Babel when we went in the door of the funeral parlour. The undertaker manning the door looked at me as though I was a competitor trying to sneak in to steal business from him. He had a tie with his suit. He imperiously sent us on to the main salon where that day’s event was happening.

There were more than 200 people in that room. I was the only guy in a suit. One refined looking gentleman was wearing a sports jacket and a tie and I made a point of meeting him. He turned out to be the deceased’s lawyer. He explained to me that only lawyers and undertakers wear ties in Babel. I commiserated with him over the loss of a client.

I finally got to meet the deceased while perusing a memorabilia wall displaying pictures of the highlights of his life. I thought the wall was rather well done until I came across the urn that contained the deceased. It made a complete story.

But it was the informality of the event that sticks with me. It was definitely a ‘come as you are’ party. One woman had something more important on later and had kept her hair in curlers. Another was one of those ladies whom, if you could show her a photograph from behind, would never wear those shorts again. It was a warm, sunny day and some of the sun dresses and halter tops were, to say the least, skimpy, but enjoyable.

The men were worse. T-shirts and jeans could be forgiven but you should not change the oil in your car immediately before coming to the funeral. The deceased had lots of golf trophies on the memorabilia wall, so many of his friends obviously came directly to the funeral from doing their 18 for the day. They obviously hurried as many seemed to have had no time for a shower.

I thought it was touching that one of his golfing buddies brought his eight iron in with him to chip a ball around the room in his honour. This caused something of a confrontation with the undertaker. I was too far away to hear whether the undertaker was more concerned about divots in the carpet or errant chips through windows. I suppose it would never do to have the premature dispersal of the ashes by a hard-hooked Titleist.

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An ode to the plastic grocery bag.

by Peter Lowry

It is critically important that I state, up front and most emphatically, that I am not one of those Neanderthals who fail to recognize the long-term needs of our beautiful planet. That does not mean though that I cannot shed a tear for the demise of that endangered species, the grocery store plastic bag. Banned, loathed, derided, despised and now expensive, they will be sorely missed by those of us whose modest role in this life is to take out the garbage.

And while we sit here, contemplating the inequity foisted upon us by well-meaning do-gooders, we also add a kind thought for the millions of dog walkers who share our recognition of the absolute necessity of those plastic bags. What are those dog lovers to do? For years, they have made special reuse of those bags. They were one-size-fits-all and fitted handily and loosely over the hand to assist in the quick pick-up of Fido’s night deposits. Are they going to forego their scooping? Are those handy containers of bags for forgetful pooch walkers going to be another polite gesture relegated to the past? Are the signs in the parks going to say ‘Please walk on the grass but watch out for poop’?

What, may I ask, is the poor parent to do when junior, once again, has left his lunch box somewhere or other? The poor parent has to resort to paper bags so kindly provided from the outrageous profits of our local liquor store. You can only do that until the little tyke learns to read and realizes that you are sending him/her to school with a bag that admonishes them that if they drink, they should not drive.

Think of the frustrated handyman who had so many uses for this most versatile of carry-alls. Consider the plight of the gardener denied a safe sack for those necessary cuttings. What do you do when returning library books on a rainy afternoon? Where is that quick expediency of a rain hat for the lady hurrying home from the beauty parlour? Where do you put all the pieces for that toaster when you realize it is beyond your technical skills to repair? Where will you look for an emergency diaper bag? The list is lengthy and diverse, the needs so dire.

Even if we forego Fido, deny offspring, watch television instead of reading, do our perms at home, discard failed appliances, let the kid scream, we are still faced with the basic item: garbage. Garbage will always be with us. In ancient times it was defenestrated but you still had to smell it when you went outside. You are not about to bring a disgusting big garbage can into your kitchen to contain your waste. Even if you live in a high-rise building, you still have to forestall drips as you take the material down the hall to where you can drop it down a chute.

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Let’s not praise border bungling.

by Peter Lowry

It has been a long time since Americans and Canadians have had the same ease of transit across our mutual border that Europeans routinely enjoy when crossing borders between their countries. The American-Canadian border used to be the longest unprotected border in the world and today too many people, on both sides of the border, want to see it more restrictive. One of those people is Senator Colin Kenny, chair of the Senate committee on national security and defence. Writing for the Toronto Star today, Kenny applauds U.S. homeland security tsar Janet Napolitano’s efforts to further stifle the ease of crossing that border.

Colin and I go back many years in Canadian politics. When retiring Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau graciously appointed him to the Senate, the appointment had nothing to do with Colin’s stimulating intellect. It had much more to do with a ‘thank you’ for Colin’s many years in a tough, rather thankless organizational role in the Prime Minister’s office. Those of us who volunteered to work off and on with Colin at political functions for the Prime Minister came to refer to him as “the white rabbit.” This was not derogatory. It was said with a smile because he so often came late to meetings with words that sounded like: “Oh dear! Oh dear! I shall be too late!” and we local functionaries, like Lewis Carroll’s Alice, were expected to follow him down whatever rabbit hole to which he chose to lead us.

He is certainly not taking me down this rabbit hole. I’ll fight on this issue. Colin says in the Star story that Napolitano’s idea of sending 700 new agents to guard our mutual border is great. He thinks we should have more border guards to help the Americans out. So far all those new rules and increased surveillance have done is hurt trade between our countries and reduce the buying traffic at border discount outlets.

Colin thinks that increasing our border vigilance will impress Washington. He should know by now that nothing impresses Washington people but their own egos. He also thinks our border approach is too relaxed and that this attitude allows the Americans to delay Canadian products going south. He believes our participation with the Americans on Inter-Border Enforcement Teams (IBETs) is a ‘terrific idea.’ Even worse, he applauds the arming of more of our customs personnel.

What Colin fails to understand or explain in his article is how any of this foolishness is going to help bring more American tourists to Canada or expedite shipments of Canadian goods to the American market. Those are two issues that are not on the radar of Homeland Secretary Napolitano and are most important to our Canadian economy.

Colin should enjoy his retirement to the Canadian Senate and stop being an apologist for xenophobic Americans.

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Elections come down to one basic idea.

by Peter Lowry

Sitting in on a political meeting the other day, I became bored after a while with all the discussion of what should be in the party’s election platform. It was not that I did not feel strongly about some of the issues raised but the litany of issues and opinions was endless. We were starting to waste time. While parties need these platform documents to differentiate themselves from other political parties and as a uniform song sheet for candidates, the fact is that campaigns on a national scale often come down to just one overriding gut issue.

Any political pundit knows that it is impossible to predict what that issue will be. They all try to create that issue and very, very few succeed. Too often, that issue is just an accident of timing. In 1972, I remember David Lewis, then leader of the NDP, had used the term “corporate welfare bums” four of five times in speeches before the news media would pick it up and it went on to become the key phrase of the election. The NDP won the balance of power in that election but Lewis failed to capitalize on his position and was trounced by Pierre Trudeau in the 1974 federal election.

When Lester Pearson ousted John Diefenbaker as Prime Minister in 1963, the key was nuclear warheads for Bomarc missiles in Canada. Canada’s language divide split the 2008 election into two key factors. Harper’s attack ads, that Dion failed to answer, allowed Harper to savage the Liberals in English Canada while Harper’s demonic treatment of cultural issues assured his defeat in Quebec. That election left Canadians with a parliament that has to combine the vote of all three opposition parties to defeat the minority Conservative government.

But defeat is assured. Harper’s Conservatives are hardly resting this summer as an election is more likely in the fall than next year. In the fall, the Liberals under Ignatieff, will be ready for an election and it will be very difficult for the Bloc or the NDP to alter course to support Harper. While there are ups and downs in the figures, the basic situation is that 30 per cent of voters are likely to vote Conservative, 30 per cent are likely to vote Liberal, at least 15 per cent of voters are going to vote NDP and 10 per cent of Canadian voters are going to vote for the Bloc. That means that the people who will really decide the fall election will be less than 15 per cent of our voters.

Even of that small percentage of the voters, we know that, at least, a third of them are going to scatter their votes on Greens, Libertarians, independents and others. They want to make their own statement and it is not worth the effort and time of anyone to get them to support someone who can win. What it boils down to is that one in ten of Canadian voters are the real decision makers and that is the group you need to reach with this gut issue that can make or break your campaign.

You can, of course, argue that the non-voters are also the decision makers. These are voters such as the probable Liberal voters from 2008 who failed to go to the polls because they expected Dion to be a loser. This is why for eons in North American politics, the riding politicos have concentrated on getting their identified voters to the polls. Any political poll captain, worth anything to the campaign, spends that last hour that the voting stations are open, desperately trying to get those last five to ten voters to the polls. And that effort is often made easier or more difficult based on the one key issue.

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Babel and its second-hand news media.

by Peter Lowry

You listen to the put-downs, the sly digs, the knowing slurs, the mindless jokes and say little but enough is enough. So I live in Babel. It’s not a second-class town. It’s not just where the military from Base Borden come to drink and whore. It’s not just a bunch of big box stores to serve the cottage bound. This is a city that deserves to be treated as a city in its own right. It’s not a poor cousin to the big smoke, south on Highway 400.

And our lousy local news media need to understand that.

Not that we ever did anything to deserve the media that we have in this city? The ‘A Channel,’ owned by CTVglobemedia, is the runt of the litter. It is not only a pitiful excuse for a television outlet but if it was not a competitor of the pretentious CFTO in the big smoke, CTV would put it up for adoption. The radio stations are owned by a variety of broadcast chains whose executives could not find the city on a county map. They sell a demographic to advertisers based on a computer selected sound. Nobody makes the mistake of referring to their employees as talent. One of the stations pays its broadcast people so poorly, half of them, on air, sound like they refer to their station as “f…in 93.”

But it is print media in Babel that is on the shoddy side of disgusting. Start with the Examiner. That is what they call it. It examines nothing. The publication has been through more rapacious hands than a Dunlop Street hooker on a busy Friday night. It is currently operated by a Markham company called Osprey that is, in turn, owned by those printing company people at Quebecor in Montreal. The Osprey concept of chain control is so distant that you yearn to return to those caring days of that kindly, philanthropic publisher Conrad Black. Their idea of editorial staffing is determined by their parsimonious approach.

The other major print publication is operated by Metroland, a wholly owned subsidiary of Torstar, a company better known for its Toronto Star newspaper. Mind you, any similarity between their local Babel publication and a real newspaper is purely coincidental. I like to call it the Babel Backward. It is distributed free, twice each week, as a wrap for grocery chain advertising, pizza delivery ads, furniture store flyers, etc.

The latest insult to journalism by this direct-to-recycle rag was a front-page story in the June 16, 2009 edition. It was by-lined by a staff reporter who normally spends her time fawning over the local city counsellors. While headlined that (Liberal leader Michael) ‘Ignatieff looks for concessions,` the story was really about her favourite member of parliament and big-time advertiser in her biased publication, the ubiquitous Mr. Brown. It was a plaintive whine about why the constantly campaigning Mr. Brown does not want an election. He knows how easily he can lose.

While there is frustration in Babel over the local media situation, there are few solutions. Creating long-term alternative media would be a very expensive proposition for anyone foolish enough to take on the deep pockets of the chain media that have dragged us down. The media down the road in the big smoke will continue to dominate as more and more Torontonians escape the city for the easier life here in Babel.

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Entry #4

by Peter Lowry

The Ontario government and its gambling addiction

When writing recently about the Ontario government’s addiction to alcohol, it occurred to me that the more serious addiction is gambling. If I were a religious person, worried about the immortal souls of my fellow citizens of this wonderful province, I would be down at the Legislature every day on my knees praying for the Members of Provincial Parliament to be cleansed in the blood of the lamb and exhorting them to renounce their corrupt and venal ways of taking money from the suckers.

Since I am not religious and try to be tolerant of most organized religions—at least the less harmful and less strident ones—I take my concerns to Casino Rama. It is only 25 minutes from Babel.

Nobody is sanctimonious at Rama. The place is an ugly barn with delusions of some connection to a long-gone nomadic aboriginal culture. Inside it is all about the business of taking your money. There are few allusions to the staggering amounts of money the place earns for government coffers. The place is cheap, badly designed, with gaming tables uncomfortably wedged together, narrow aisles of dreary slots and the ill-lit gaming floor surrounded with the necessary food places and restrooms. The theatre is one of those curtained expandable areas where you usually expect to see basketball nets folded up and you sit on uncomfortable chairs to see has-beens and wannabes with the rare good act that will agree to do a cheap gig.

They certainly do not overpay the staff either. Awkwardly structured shifts, poorly trained supervisors, constant, intrusive surveillance leads to a high staff turnover and, too frequently, the imposition of new, ill-trained staff on the players.

Mind you most of the gamblers are also novices. It is why there are so many blackjack tables. Blackjack is a game that any jackass can play, and they often do. It is a social game but playing along with people who really know how to play is a rare and delightful event. Most times you are playing with people who have no clue as to basic strategy or money management. They think they can guess what will be the next card out of an eight-deck shoe. They are afraid to take a card when they really need one. The worst players are the ones who play two spots on the table because they are afraid to lose and figure (incorrectly) that they will win at least one of their bets and lose less money.

But no table game is going to make you a winner if you always make the same bet. If you don’t use a flexible money management system, the simple odds of the game say that you will eventually lose your money. It hardly matters what you are playing, the smart gambler is one who takes advantage of his or her wins. In horse racing lingo, it is called parlaying. You rarely ever see anyone doing that at Rama. The exception is at the craps tables. The best gaming odds in the casino are at the craps tables because these tables attract the most knowledgeable players. They know to push their bets during a hot roll.

The best kept secret at any Ontario casino is the information that casinos compile on frequent gamblers. Until recently, many players carried a card that could be mined for information on money won and lost. The casino knew who to encourage to come more frequently and those who are less welcome. Players were offered free shows, meals and other benefits based on the information generated by their card information.

But many of the freebies have been cancelled over the last while. Some feel the recession mood has hit the casinos while others feel that they figure people will come without the encouragement. The real reason is probably lost in the schizophrenic management of gaming by the province. Between the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation (OLG) and the Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario and constant inference from the politicians, it is hard to tell who is running the games.

And we know who are the worst possible people to be meddling in gaming. They are the people who know the least about it: politicians.

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