Only the deluded, or special interests, want a casino

The editor of this newspaper had earlier written: “Toronto needs no casinos. We already have one on Bay Street.” This pretty well sums it up. People already have enough means to lose their money. Speculative financial markets certainly provide plenty of opportunities.

Many other means of legal gambling are also available both in Toronto and outside. Ontario already has 24 gaming sites licensed by the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corp.(OLG). We have slot machines available 24/7 at the Woodbine Racetrack in Etobicoke. We have big-scale public lotteries with prizes in the millions available at some 10,000 retailers.

Gambling is one of our many human weaknesses. It is the eternal dream of sudden riches. Yet lottery winners are often ruined by sudden wealth.

Their ordinary lives are thrown upside down. They have no idea of how to handle all their new money. They go on buying sprees. They become public figures badgered by people begging for handouts or for unfamiliar investments.

Also family strife may develop about the sharing of the wealth. What seemed a most lucky break may turn out the very opposite.

Paul Godfrey, head of OLG, is a fervent advocate of more casinos. He is a powerful conservative mover-and-shaker. He is now pressing for a Toronto casino. Understandably, he says he does not want a casino in his particular residential neighbourhood. But he is adamant about a Toronto casino. He does not view Downtown Toronto as “residential” despite its great and quickly growing population of residents.

Three Downtown casino sites are being promoted by various powerful American-led gambling interests. The sites are the Toronto Convention Centre, Exhibition Place and the Port Lands. Each involves heavy public investment in expanded physical infrastructure.

The convention site in particular, would create massive traffic problems. The frantic addition of new buildings along our waterfront at triple the zoned density already have residents of Maple Leaf Square waiting up to an hour to exit their garage during events at the adjacent Air Canada Centre. Exhibition Place would require expensive new transportation and parking facilities. Established Port Lands plans are no more suitable for a mega-casino complex than the outlandish idea a couple of years ago of a mega-mall, luxury hotel, giant Ferris-wheel and skytrain by our mayor’s brother, rookie Councillor Doug Ford.

Last Nov. 5, the council’s executive committee received a comprehensive report on a casino in Toronto from City Manager Joe Pennachetti (set your browser to www.toronto.ca/casinoconsultation/reports.htm). It included a study by consultants Ernst and Young. Its exceptionally broad-range estimates of cost and gains have subsequently been picked apart by many informed sources. The study appears to be no more reliable than the projected “savings” in a 1996 mega-city amalgamation study by consultants KPMG. That study was commissioned in all haste by then-Premier Mike Harris, trying to justify an ill-conceived amalgamation strongly opposed in a public referendum.

The executive committee instructed Pennachetti to organize a public consultation comprised of five open houses and an online questionnaire. The result will be presented to the committee and published March 20. The committee recommendations will then be debated by city council only two weeks later on April 3 and 4. Prepare to witness an intensive public and private lobbying effort by well-heeled gambling interests.

Our Downtown city, provincial and federal political representatives are against a Downtown casino.

They rightly fear the damage to local businesses as exemplified in American cities and also in Windsor, Ontario. They note four Toronto Board of Health reports describing available evidence of the private, social, and health damage of gambling (see www.toronto.ca/health/gambling/index.htm).

Mayor Rob Ford is jumping on the casino bandwagon in his usual simplistic and ill-informed manner. Relying on illusory economic gains, he totally ignores the broader impacts of casinos. In 1997, Toronto residents voted overwhelmingly against a casino. Will we have the sense to do it again?

For more information, go to the protest website www.nocasinotoronto.com