Concerned Casino Citizens call for Evaluation of Casino Establishment - Location
Concerned Casino Citizens is calling on various influential local organizations and groups to review and evaluate the economic and social consequences of the establishment of a casino in Sudbury based on findings by the Canadian Consortium for Gambling Research.
Excerpts from a non-biased report prepared for the Consortium, which are attached, deserve attention from all significant parties in our community including city council, the economic development corporation, the chamber of commerce, downtown development groups, the city planning department, the social planning council, health unit and others interested.
Copies of the complete report “The Social and Economic Impacts of Gambling” will be provided to all the organizations and groups mentioned in the anticipation that they will carefully review the findings and determine if and where a casino should be located in our community.
Concerned Casino Citizens is a committee of Friendly to Seniors - Sudbury, an advocacy group for Older Adults that has previously expressed concern with respect to a casino in Sudbury as this segment of our society is often a target audience for casino operators.
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Quotes from the 2011 Report “The Social and Economic Impacts of Gambling” The full report is available on the “Canadian Consortium for Gambling Research” website at www.ccrg.ca.
“The introduction of gambling has the greatest potential to have broad economic benefits to the local economy when the revenue comes from outside the area .. when the casino patronage base is from the local area it is much less likely there will be beneficial impacts on other sectors of the economy (ie just substitution effects)”
“One of the potential concerns of gambling is that it may redirect money from wealth producing sectors (ie private business) to sectors not known for wealth creation (ie govt. and charities)”
“If gambling revenues are primarily collected at other than the local level and are redistributed provincially then there is a good chance that there will be a net outflow of money from the local municipality hosting the gambling venue”
“Negative impact on other business have been reported most commonly in studies where gambling patronage is derived locally”
“gambling often has benefits on other non-gambling business when it is able to attract revenue from outside the local area. This is particularly true when the number of visitors is large relative to the local population”
“employment increases in gambling venues, gambling related businesses, or any geographic area will usually occur at the expense of other geographic areas and/or business sectors”
“most gambling industry employment is typically low skilled and low paid .. if these new jobs displace better paid positions in other industries than the employment impacts would be more negative than neutral"
“Community leaders in govt and business tend to have a positive attitude about the impact of gambling .. In contrast, the attitude of the general population toward gambling is much more negative”
“In general, consumer engagement in commercial gambling has very little to do with rational economic sense, as consumer gambling opportunities always represent a losing proposition to the consumer”
“Research confirms that lower income people consistently contribute proportionally more of their income to gambling than do middle and high income groups”
“the majority of gambling revenue tends to come from a small percentage of the population”
“Only a small proportion of people typically report gambling is a very important leisure activity or has replaced other leisure activities”
“One of the main negative impacts of gambling is the increase of problem gambling and its related indices (eg bankruptcy, divorce, suicide, treatment numbers ..)”
“It should also be remembered that problem gambling affects more than just the problem gambler as population surveys show that a significant portion of problem gamblers are married and have children and the percentage of people whose quality of life may be negatively impacted by problem gambling is 3 to 4 times the rate of problem gambling prevalent in the general population: “Continuous forms of gambling (casino) with 24 hour accessibility have greater potential to increase crime”
“Casinos have greater addiction potential because they offer continuous forms of gambling and thus are more reliably associated with increased rates of problem gambling and related indices”
“Casinos have a higher potential for increasing crime than other forms of gambling”“Casinos like most other forms of gambling are economically regressive”
“Casinos have relatively little impact on overall leisure behavior because they are patronized by the minority of the population”
“Horse racing tends to support a wider range of business than other forms of gambling”
“Although casinos employ a considerable number of people, it may well be less labour intensive than some of the forms it may be replacing. For example, a horse race track not only employs people in the racing sector but also indirectly supports farmers who grow horse feed, as well as the many people employed in the breeding and raising horses (most of whom will usually be in the same jurisdiction as the race track”
“Horse racing is associated with problem gambling but not the same extent as other forms and no overall impacts on quality of life have been documented”
In summary it would indicate based on the findings of the report that any short term economic gains would be offset by long term economic “pain” besides other social costs. Over all there would be little economic benefit to locating a casino in our community as we could not draw a significant number from outside the area, especially with casinos in other northern communities. Also that “horse racing” is the lesser of all the various gambling “evils”. The report can be found in its entirety on the Friendly to Seniors website at www.friendlytoseniors.ca. and also at the Canadian Consortium for Gambling Reseach at www.ccrg.ca.
We respectfully urge review of the document and consideration of its content with reference to the Sudbury consideration of a Casino and its location in Greater Sudbury.
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The Sudbury working-group site is no longer being updated and has been archived.