The plans for the new Toronto casino have crumbled in a pretty spectacular way. In a crushing defeat, the Toronto casino was sent to the dustbin of history with a vote of 38-6! What is most impressive about the story is that grassroots Canadians are credited with making it happen. Regular Canadians, worried about the health of families, concerned about the ability of small and mid-size businesses being able to compete with casinos and disgusted by the cruelty of governments making incredible sums of money off of addicts, these Canadians...
This week, ARPA Canada sent a letter to Toronto's Mayor Rob Ford and the 44 councillors urging them to reconsider the Mayor's position on building a casino in the downtown core. Mr. Ford is on record as advocating for the casino as a financial saviour of the city. Sadly, he has dismissed outright many of the social scientific evidence that demonstrates the incredible costs to the city in law enforcement and lost revenue for small and mid-size business as well as the heavy toll on addiction services and the losses...
The City of Ottawa recently sent a letter to the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation (OLG), expressing interest in becoming a host city to a large gaming entertainment centre (read: casino). You can learn more about that story here. We were happy to hear that at least some councillors were hesitant about the idea, expressing concern over the social welfare of the city. ARPA Canada drafted a letter to Mayor Jim Watson and the 23 councillors outlining the risks and hidden costs of such a project and urging caution. Often...
Cardus.ca: On September 30, the Supreme Court of Canada ordered the federal government to keep open the doors of a controversial "safe" injection site for drug addicts on Vancouver's tragic Downtown Eastside. It was an order LexView writer Kevin Boonstra says represents a serious error in judicial logic. There's no question, Boonstra agrees, that something must be done to help addicts in the deeply troubled neighbourhood. At the same time, it's dubious to claim the Insite facility is, in fact, safe. And the high...
By Derek Miedema, Institute of Marriage and Family Canada: Gambling in Canada is big business. Statistics Canada reports that gambling brought in over $13 billion in revenue in 2008.1 The decisions of British Columbia, Ontario, Quebec and the Atlantic provinces to allow government-sanctioned online gambling are a sign that governments still want more...