There’s a deep conflict of interest underlying Alberta’s approach to the gambling business.
At the same time as our provincial government is supposed to be the regulator of the gaming industry, it is raking in outrageous amounts of money participating in the business. We need someone other than the fox to oversee this henhouse.
The Alberta government’s latest budget says that net income from gaming for the latest fiscal year (that ended in March) should be $1.16 billion. That’s about $400 for every man, woman and child in the province. And the revenue far exceeds taxes or royalty rates paid by any other business.
The company that collects the revenue and oversees the industry is called the Alberta Liquor and Gaming Commission, but there is only one kind of game that this agency cares about: Gambling.
As academic research accumulates, it’s becoming evident that there are serious regulatory challenges involved in the gaming business. But it’s highly questionable whether our provincial government and taxpayers have the fortitude to tackle them. There is too much to lose.
Few Albertans want legal gambling to cease altogether. We are wise enough to recognize that it is better to regulate, rather than ban, the industry. But taxpayers, including taxpaying (profitable) businesses, aren’t qualified to make unbiased judgments on the regulatory issues, because they are net beneficiaries of gambling. The only people who can independently arbitrate this issue are low-income Albertans and businesses that don’t pay taxes – non-profit corporations. And some of these businesses are sending a message, which is taking some of the game out of gambling.
Last month, the Alberta Knights of Columbus announced that they would phase out all casino fund- raising over the next two years, despite an expected $1 million hit.
“It’s big money and quick money,” Mickey Casavant, state deputy for the 15,000-member non-profit charitable organization. “But this is not what the Knights are intended to be. We are intended to do charity work through giving of our time and talents, and not by handing over money.”
Calgary Bishop Fred Henry last year encouraged all church organizations to phase out casinos and bingos because of the threat gambling poses to the livelihood of players.
Robert Hunter, a veteran psychologist from Nevada who specializes in problem gambling, once said: “If you don’t think gambling is a serious problem for society, consider that no alcoholic has ever drank away four generations of money in a weekend – which I know that gamblers can do.”
As legal gambling is a fairly recent phenomenon in Canada, hard science on it is in its infancy. Only recently have standards to measure problem gambling been widely accepted. And new technologies have heightened our awareness of how gambling can be abused. Modern video lottery terminals (VLTs), for example, can monitor the behaviour of individual users in a way that has never been possible before.
Ironically, as Albertans are learning more about the business, statistics show they are gambling less.The percentage of adult gamblers has dropped from 90 per cent to 82 per cent over the past decade or so.
In the meantime, gambling revenues across Canada have increased dramatically. The Canada West Foundation, another non-profit company based in Calgary, published a report in 2001 that said “Net revenues from electronic gambling machines in lounges and racetracks have risen 1,369 per cent over the last eight years. Over this time, casino activity has increased 573 per cent and lotteries rose 19 per cent.”
Several recent surveys have shown that problem gamblers and at-risk gamblers comprise around five per cent of the gambling public in Alberta, which means roughly 100,000 Albertans. So it’s a big problem.
Academic studies (non- profit, again) are also making it clear that the problem gamblers, or people who exhibit loss of control of their gambling behaviour (usually one to two per cent of gamblers, and the biggest spenders by far), tend to be young, poor and single, and tend to suffer from other problems (attention deficit disorder, substance abuse, personality disorders, and so on).
They also, typically, have difficulty understanding the science behind gambling. The fancy word is “cognitive deficiency,” but in practice that means they suffer from the so-called gamblers’ fallacy (“I just flipped five heads in a row, so there’s a greater chance the next will be a tail”), superstitious thinking (“I win with my lucky hat”), selective memory retention (“I won $300” – but spent $500), or the illusion of control (“I can press this VLT button in a way to make it win more often”). In other words, these gamblers lack basic logical reasoning.
Therefore, people with conscience are gradually realizing the gambling in this province is lowering our taxes by exploiting people who already have the odds stacked against them.
It’s time to have a third-party, non-profit arbiter regulate this sector. Either that, or the government should stop taking any profit at all. As things stand, the situation is unconscionable.
