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6/24/2010: Accounting for the real impacts of gambling in Canada
Mark Anielski, economist and president of his family-owned corporation Anielski Management Inc. and adjunct professor of corporate social responsibility at the University of Alberta’s School of Business in Edmonton, Alberta is not happy a Nova Scotia commissioned gambling impact report was rejected.
Accounting for the real impacts of gambling in Canada
The study had two objectives: to establish a base-line analysis of a range of social and economic impacts that can be attributed to gambling in Nova Scotia, and to present an analytical, factual and objective snap-shot of those impacts.
Report rejected
Our completed 323-page final draft report, called The Socio-economic Impact Study of Gambling in Nova Scotia, was delivered on June 22, 2009. However, on July 8, 2009, the steering committee overseeing the research study met in private – our research team was not invited – and decided to reject our report’s research findings, conclusions and recommendations.
We have since been accused of using faulty research methods and flawed statistics, and of focusing too narrowly on the well-being impacts of a relatively few number of Nova Scotia’s problem gamblers and on Video Lottery Terminals (VLTs).
To say I was shocked that our study was dismissed so cavalierly would be an understatement because, if it had been released, it would have been the first of its kind: a comprehensive well-being impact assessment of gambling in Canada and in the world. It would also have set a new standard for accountability for both the positive and negative impacts of gambling.
Then Conservative provincial Labour Minister Mark Parent says he was surprised to read committee minutes expressing concerns about an early draft of the study:
Parent says if there were early indications that the study was flawed, he should have been kept informed.
He says he had pushed for the study and he should have been shown the committee’s findings.
A spokeswoman for the department would not comment on Parent’s remarks.
Parent says if he’d seen the minutes, he believes something could have been done to ensure the study was completed and released.
The minutes of the meeting were obtained under the FIO by The Canadian Press. Parent says he was told the study was behind schedule. The province paid 144 thousand dollars, the government still says it is flawed, but will not explain why it is flawed.
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