I think you’ve seen that I’m not convinced of the value of a bunch of new casinos in Ontario, but I have absolutely no idea what this from Tory leader Tim Hudak is supposed to mean:
“Government spends too much time and money running businesses it has no need to be in, like designing scratch and win tickets and casino marketing plans,” Hudak said. “Rather than investing in the things that Ontarians value most, like world-leading health care, first-class education and new subway routes, we have billions tied up in these businesses.”
Hudak cited an example of the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation studying the latest lottery trends in instant win scratch cards, deciding whether crossword puzzle tickets are better than instant keno.
“At a time when one million people are without a family doctor and waiting to get vital health care services, Ontarians want their government investing in MRI scans, not buying roulette wheels or slot machines.”
Hudak pointed to the inherent contradiction in the government being the regulator and also the day-to-day operator. “It is time for the government to become the responsible, respected and tough regulator not the operator trying to bully communities into accepting new casinos.”
It’s true that there’s an inherent contradiction in the government’s being both the regulator of vice and its beneficiary, whether we’re talking about liquor or gambling. But it is different parts of the government that do the regulating (the Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario) and the promoting (the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corp., in the case of most gambling). And a fundamental part of the OLG “modernization” campaign is to get out of the day-to-day operation of casinos, contracting that out to industry specialists who win the various contracts around the province.
More fundamentally, the argument for having the government in the vice business is that the vice business makes money for world-leading health care, first-class education and new subway routes. The bigger argument for the OLG expansion is that it’ll make the government more money off willing (mostly) gamblers to pay for a more awesome government.
Gambling is a profit centre, not a cost, even if it involves doing the occasional study. The same people who are studying scratch cards, or pit-bossing, would not be running MRI machines if only they weren’t burdened with all this gambling to administer.
This, by the way, is why provincial politics is such a wasteland of despair: The governing party wants more gambling and the opposition has criticisms of the plan that make no sense.
(Obligatory disclosure: The chairman of the OLG is Paul Godfrey, who’s chief executive of Postmedia Network Inc., which owns the Citizen.)
