Usually in diatribes against the sin of gambling, you get disjointed, uninformed and confused information based on bible studies, imagination and urban legends. It was interesting the other day to read an objection from someone with a surfeit of supposedly scientific information. A gentleman named Rob Simpson signed the article. He is reputed to have spent ten years as the chief executive of the Ontario Problem Gambling Research Centre. That meant the Ontario government provided about $3 million per year for his organization to arrange for professional studies of problem gambling.
These studies would probably have shown that problem gambling could affect up to 3.2 per cent of the population from a mild to serious degree. Mr. Simpson does not mention that finding in his lengthy opinion piece in the Toronto Star. Nor does he mention that Ontario has far more serious concerns with alcohol, drug and tobacco addictions. And it should be noted that the Ontario government makes even more money from alcohol and tobacco addictions than it does from gambling.
Mr. Simpson considers just five concerns in his lengthy article damning expansion of Woodbine’s racing and slots to a full casino resort operation.
- His first objection is that the expansion is “massive.” He obviously is not an observer of what has happened in Las Vegas since ‘Bugsy’ Seigel built the Flamingo. You would think the Vegas slogan should be ‘Grosser is Greater.’ If we are going to have all this foolishness about having just one casino in the Greater Toronto Area, it is going to have to be big enough to handle the traffic. And one casino resort operation is hardly going to cause more than a ripple in Toronto’s leisure and entertainment sector.
- The second objection is that the casino would get most of its revenue from the 6 million Greater Toronto Area residents. Why this is an objection is not really clear. He points out that gambling revenue is down in places like Atlantic City and Las Vegas. That is a really profound observation when you consider that the world economy has not been overly healthy for some time. Mind you the new Woodbine complex will not be in full operation next week either. Mr. Simpson is obviously not an economist.
- The third objection he raises is that problem gambling is a problem. We could ignore that observation but he goes on to tell us that slots and table games are the most harmful. And we always thought we were trapped by gambling when engaged in pitching pennies with our lunch money during recess in public school. Are lotteries and bingo less harmful? Is that poker game with friends not friendly enough?
- Our favourite was the fourth objection. He makes the statement that gambling is inefficient. He complains that only 35 per cent of gambling revenues are turned over to government. Would you like to invest in a billion dollar enterprise that returns 35 per cent net profit? And at the same time he complains that the local burghers will only get 2 per cent of gross revenues for finding it in their municipality. That is found money and is hardly chump change.
- And he wraps it up by saying nobody wants the casino anyway. Since there are many investors quite willing to gamble hundreds of millions on this venture, he should let them. It is highly unlikely that Mr. Simpson would have the last laugh.
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Copyright 2015 © Peter Lowry
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