Ontario's Big Gamble

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Published: February 25, 2013 01:31 pm EST

Sun News Network has examined the Ontario Lottery & Gaming Corp.'s controversial gaming plan in a special three-part series, and what could be the most contentious strategy item is still yet to hit the province.

To breakdown how the governing Liberals envision the future of gaming in the province versus the opposition Progressive Conservatives, Kelly Pedro of the London Free Press provides the following key points in Part 1 .

The Liberal plan:

- Create 29 gaming zones bundled for private operators to bid and build a casino in each zone. Some zones, such as London and the Waterloo Region, call for both slots and table games. OLG would oversee and regulate the industry

- Move some facilities to more densely populated areas

- Have private operator build new casino resort in the GTA, preferably downtown Toronto

- Launch online gaming site — playolg.ca — in the fall, allowing Ontarians to play the lottery or gamble online

- Cut the horse-racing industry’s $345 million take from slot revenue at racetracks as of March 31. Horse racing would continue at some of the 14 tracks but others would close

The PC plan:

- Get government out of the gambling business and instead become a tough regulator

- Regulate existing online gaming sites

- Wind down OLG, privatize lotteries, casino assets and slot operations and give horse-racing industry first crack at buying gaming operations

- If casinos are miracle solution, add table games to racetrack slots that have proven existence and community support

- Have local referendum so communities can decide for themselves if they want a casino

In Part 2, Pedro delves deeper into who will be hit hardest by the OLG's modernization strategy: Ontario's horse racing industry and rural Ontario.

“This was just like a guillotine,” said former Ontario Racing Commission Chair Stan Sadinsky, noting that the province should have mapped out a better plan that didn't cripple the province's breeding industry.

“The fallout has been severe and we’ve seen communities in rural Ontario become devastated with the loss of the horse-racing industry,” said provincial NDP Leader Andrea Horwath. “Thousands of jobs lost and hundreds of small businesspeople put out of business. It’s been quite a fiasco.”

While land-based gaming is nothing new to the OLG, Part 3 of the feature looks at the part of the modernization that's a complete unknown: online gambling, with interactive casino-style games and online lottery ticket sales, another move panned by Horwath who calls it "click your mouse, lose your house kind of gaming."

Dave Bryans, chief executive of the Ontario Convenience Stores Association, notes the jury is still out on how this will impact business for the province's convenience stores. These stores sell more lottery tickets than anyone, and Bryans doesn't see that changing.

“I’m not saying it’s all doom and gloom — we have to reinvent ourselves and that is working with your partners like lottery,” he said. “The future is sort of mysterious but we have to understand that we are the biggest deliverer of lottery sales to this government and we’ll continue to be and let’s see where we go with all of them together."

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