This morning in Montreal a major news conference was held to launch a coalition of concerned citizens to call for the immediate removal of ALL VLTs from bars and any other venues other than the 3 existing casinos in our province. Our second demand is that all advertising and promotion of gambling be deemed illegal as it is with tobacco products. Thirdly, that there be no building of new casinos or moving the existing Montreal Casino from its present location. I am proud to be one of the founding members of this coalition and attached below is the presentation which I read publicly this A.M. We already have a web site www.emjeu.com but since we are all operating on our own money we cannot maintain a bilingual site. Phyllis Vineberg has joined our coalition and so has Jean Brochu. He is the Quebec City lawyer who was a victim of VLTs and is spearheading the $700 million class-action suit against Loto-Quebec. Other members include Pierre Desjardins who is a professor of Philosophy and author of a book, "Le Livre Noir de Loto-Quebec. Alain Dubois who is a treatment provider at the Dollard Cormier Institute, Jean Metayer who has headed ÿa group of citizens opposed to the expansion of gambling, and Did Tafari Belizaire, a compulsive gambler who because of his addiction to VLTs jumped off the Jacques Cartier bridge last September in a suicide attempt which failed and he is now paraplegic and confined to a wheel chair. I hope that this movement will encourage other groups in other provinces to follow suit and demand a return to the life we used to have before the government got into the business of gambling.
Cordially,
Sol
Media Address- May 25, 2004
In December of 1999 I was invited to give testimony at a parliamentary commission in the National Assembly of Quebec intended to make amendments to Bill 84. I was invited because of expertise that I had acquired in western Canada while performing my function as Executive Director of the Canadian Foundation on Compulsive Gambling (Sask). During the previous five years I had developed a harmonious relationship with the Saskatchewan Gaming Corporation and the Ministry of Health. At the commission I pointed out that in Saskatchewan, it was the Ministry of Health that worked in conjunction with a Minister of Gaming to oversee gambling. However, Quebec’s structure of having the Minister of Finance in charge of gambling created an apparent conflict of interest. I also pointed out that it was difficult for Loto-Quebec to be asked to produce great revenue while also being asked to deal with problem gambling prevention. When I had completed my presentation and responded to questions from the commission, Bernard Landry (Minister of Finance) said and I quote, “You have rendered us a great service by saying that.” However, the Parti Quebecois government then continued for the next three and a half years to conduct business as usual.
In September of 2001 I was introduced formally and for the first time to Jean Charest. M. Charest acknowledged that he was aware of my involvement with gambling issues and promised that if he is elected the matter would be one of his priorities. We lived in hope for the next two and a half years that if there would be a change in government, there would be changes made to allow for more public awareness and quicker access to treatment for those who had already developed a dependency to gambling. After Jean Charest’s election win in April 2003, the first red flag went up when he appointed a former president of Loto-Quebec, Michel Crete, to be his Chief-of-Staff. The confirmation of M. Charest’s intentions came when he asked Loto-Quebec to increase revenues for the coming fiscal year.
Across the nation, it has become evident that not only have the citizens of Canada been exposed to the gambling bug and seduced until they have become gambling-dependent, but so have the provincial governments. For more than 100 years we had leaders who could run a government without proceeds from gambling. But, for the past 11 years no government can figure out a way to maintain revenues without killing the marketplace and eventually the consumers.
In Nova Scotia, a Liberal Member of Parliament is demanding the Conservative Party get rid of VLTs while ignoring the fact that it is his own Party that thrives off the misery caused by Electronic Gaming Machines in Quebec, Ontario and British Columbia. The Conservative Party, who so smugly defend their use of VLTs in Nova Scotia are campaigning strongly in Manitoba to get the NDP government to get rid of the machines. Experts calculate the social cost per problem gambler could be as much as $56 000 which makes it quite likely that every dollar of gambling revenue is going to cost the government two to three dollars down the road. Over the years, because all the provinces are out of control, I have repeatedly attempted to meet with the federal Minister of Health to recommend an intervention and to alert them that gambling was becoming a national health issue.
Alan Rock stalled meeting with me until he was eventually replaced by Anne McLellan. Ms. McLellan also managed to avoid a meeting with me and was then shuffled to another portfolio, as well.
In speaking to you today, my main focus is on the Plan D’Action 2004-2007 of Loto-Quebec. It is another arrangement of the same old song. One that was sung by Michel Crete, then by Gaetan Frigon and now by Alain Cousineau. The plan would be to remove VLTs from some of the least profitable sites and place more machines into mini-casinos, which they will call “gaming centres” so that perhaps we won’t know that they are mini-casinos. In the end there will be 730 less machines in the province which will mean that some gamblers will not find machines at their favorite bar and will have to cross the street or go around the corner to find one. Studies show that 9% of VLT players are pathological, 21% are problematic and 43% are borderline. That means that 3 out of 4 VLT players are either in a stage of dependency or at great risk. Of the clients showing up for treatment at our facility more than 95% are VLT players. They are drained financially and emotionally. They beg to get back, not their money, but the life they once had. Suicides are reaching disastrous levels because of the hopelessness and helplessness and the depression that these machines are causing users. Quebec, originally was the only province that was tracking gambling-related suicides. We were up to 159 since records began and averaging one suicide every 15 days in recent years. Nova Scotia and Alberta recently released figures showing equally alarming rates of suicide among gamblers. The Quebec government, in all their wisdom, have figured out a way to stop these terrible suicide figures from climbing; they have forbidden the coroners from talking to the media.
There was a time when a bottle of Tylenol was tampered with and caused a death.---a bottle of Tylenol---one bottle of Tylenol. The manufacturers removed every bottle from every shelf in the country in order to guarantee no further loss of life. How many more people have to die before the government says these machines are not the gravy train they thought they had found? Where is the “duty of care”? Every problem gambler affects 4 to 14 people by their behaviour. So too, does every person who commits suicide. They leave behind family, friends and acquaintances that have to continue to mourn the loss long after the fact. I have spoken softly for 5 years now in Quebec but the government is deaf to the pleas of the public and blind to the damage they are creating. Demonstrations by Unions in front of the Montreal Casino and marches by anti-poverty groups through the streets of Westmount should be a wake-up call of things to come. You cannot continue to siphon $3 million every day of the year out of the pockets of the citizens and into the machines without creating a revolt. The argument that without the state’s participation the illegal machines would flourish does not hold water. If that is the justification then the state ought also to legalize cocaine, heroin and prostitution. If something is not healthy, then taking over the ownership of it does not purify it, it merely diverts the profits. The VLTs are as deadly as any of the illegal drugs and I am not telling the Ministry of Health anything they don’t already know.
The original idea of housing the VLTs in bars was, the government would have us believe, to have a controlled area where nobody under 18 could have access. The most current studies tell us that 8.1% of highschool students have played VLTs. VLTs are, in many cases, in bowling alleys, poolhalls and in areas highly populated by teen-agers. The VLTs are truly weapons of mass destruction and they must be destroyed. The easy access is what is creating the biggest problem and it is for that reason that the machines must be exiled. Not from the bars into the racetracks and mini-casinos but completely removed from anywhere except the 3 casinos where people who want to gamble will still have their rights respected. Of course when the government put the machines into the bars they also created a dependency among the site operators. They now have a need for the revenues they have grown accustomed to. It is therefore incumbent on the government to give site owners a healthy cash settlement in order to compensate them for the projected loss of income and to prevent a large number of bankruptcies. The parties governing have been fed at the trough, at great cost to the people of Quebec, long enough. They have drained billions of dollars out of the pockets of addicts, addicts they have created. When the Jacques Cartier Bridge becomes the second most suicide-associated bridge in the world, when people jumping in front of Metro trains become a weekly occurrence, when people are found hanging in the basements of their homes or businesses it is time to say, ENOUGH. ÇA VA FAIRE.
