United Church Social Policy Positions

According to the law, private sector gambling has no place in Canada. However, cash-strapped provincial governments have become increasingly eager to act as "partners" with commercial gambling operators in return for part of the profits of the new gambling--both casinos and electronic. These partnerships have opened Canadian cities and towns to enormous pressure to expand gambling, often without regard to the legality of the proposals. Instead of stopping with traditional government lotteries, town councils have been pressed in the 1990s to accept two types of commercial gambling: destination casinos and slot machines or VLTs.

There are several obvious results:

• Provincial governments have become active participants in the gambling industry that they are supposed to be containing and regulating.
• Provincial governments have become dependent on gambling revenues, especially from the highly lucrative VLTs, and also on "partnerships" developed with private sector gambling companies.
• Money generated by gambling is being diverted from public and charitable or religious purposes to private interests. Some of those private interests lie outside the country.

The exemptions in the Criminal Code allow for gambling that benefits the public interest through the social spending of provinces or through charities. The intrusion of the private sector means that money spent on gambling will go into the pockets of private businesses first. Unless they're in a high-traffic tourist area, it is local people's money that is being diverted to private, for-profit owners of the gambling businesses. People operating non-gambling businesses have begun to identify another result: the gambling economy "cannibalizes" other businesses. As Donald Trump, a key player in the industry put it in The Miami Herald, "People will spend an enormous amount of money they would otherwise spend on refrigerators."

Therefore, business groups have become part of the citizens' revolt in the US against government efforts to grow the gambling economy. In Canada, a similar trend is emerging. The chairman and CEO of Canadian Hunter Exploration, Ltd., Mr. J. K. Gray, became an instant newsmaker when he delivered the Canada West Foundation's study on gambling to a committee of Calgary City Council. Small business people in Nova Scotia revolted against the diversion of dollars from groceries and other consumer products to the "products" of the gambling industry. They joined many others in getting VLTs out of local stores, a first step in turning back the expansion of the gambling industry in that province. Similar stories are spread across Canada.