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8/26/2008: Canada’s Gambling Watch Newsletter
The newsletter will be delayed again this week because of line problems. Johannes will be back as soon as he works things out with Bell Canada.
8/9/2008: Manitoba gambling patterns
Most adult Manitobans gamble, and most consider it entertainment — but the number of “moderate risk” gamblers has doubled over the last five years, according to a new study by the Addictions Foundation of Manitoba.
More than 85 per cent of Manitobans have gambled at least once in the past year, which is about average in Canada, according to the study, released Thursday.
The most popular forms of gambling in the province are raffles and fundraising tickets and lottery tickets, with about 75 per cent of survey respondents indicating they had played.
Video lottery terminals were also popular, with 28 per cent playing in the last year, and casino slot machines, at 24 per cent.
As of 2008 the population of Manitoba was 1,196,291.
14% of Manitoba residents do not gamble, 10% are classified as low risk, 4.7% as moderate risk and 1.4% are problem gamblers. The study noted the number of problem gamblers has remained consistent since a similar study in 2001, but the number of moderate gamblers had doubled. The study also found women are becoming as addicted to gambling as men.
Women are also catching up to men in other addictions, such as alcohol and drugs, Borody said.
Problem gamblers are more likely to be between the ages of 18 and 24, from a lower income bracket, single and have less education compared with their non-gambling counterparts, the study suggests.
Overall, the at-risk and problem gambling rates are slightly higher than the Canadian provincial average, but comparable to the average figures in the Prairie provinces.
A total of 6,007 Manitoba adults, 18 years and over, participated in the telephone survey in the spring of 2006 to obtain the study’s results. The margin of error for the sample is plus or minus 1.29 per cent, 19 times out of 20.
From CBC Manitoba (http://www.cbc.ca/canada/manitoba/story/2008/08/07/gambling.html)
Where are Manitobans gambling?
Raffle/fundraising tickets 75.3%
Lottery tickets 74.4%
Scratch tickets/instant win 41.7%
Video lottery terminals 27.7%
Slots in a casino 23.9%
Card games not in casino 18.0%
Bingo 12.9%
Sports pools 12.2%
Horse races 7.3%
Sport Select 6.6%
Dice/card games in a casino 6.4%
Outcome of professional sports 6.1%
Internet gambling 1.5%
Other forms of gambling 1.3%
Sports with a bookie 0.2%
Addictions Foundation of Manitoba Gambling studies and treatment (http://www.afm.mb.ca/AFM%20Library/gambling.htm)
7/11/2008: Dificille Letter to Ottawa Citizen Slots profit too low
Two Ottawa area councillors want to see more profits from slot machines in their local area:
Alta Vista Councillor Peter Hume and Barrhaven Councillor Jan Harder think the province should be turning more gambling profits from slot machines over to the city. The city gets about three per cent of the take from machines at Rideau Carleton Raceway, while the two councillors say the city should be getting 10 per cent of the take.
Toronto and Ottawa municipal councillors want the same.
Letter to the editor: Ottawa Citizen
Stop and think a minute
This is not slots profit, 3 million dollars is that small part of 100 million dollars from the area slots,
giving back a small portion of community money.
Your own money.
Add to that, a similar amount for pari-mutual betting,
Add to that another maybe 100 million for lottery,
Add to that another maybe 100 million for Bingo and Nevada tickets etc.
To ask for 10 million, is maybe asking for 2 % of the money OLG siphons from the community.
As much as a half billion dollars is diverted from the Ottawa business community,
Probably for Toronto, as much as 3 billion dollars.
Perhaps a new term should be coined for OLG.
— G difficile — gambling gaming.
P. S. Don’t forget to factor in what crosses the river to Hull.
OLG diverts about 200,000 plus jobs into what?
Certainly not into community business where it belongs.
Perhaps, no doubt, SARS would be cheaper to have than OLG.
At least SARS is honest.
Difficile means difficult, G could be government, gambling, gaming.
C difficile is hard to get rid of, the G word is equally difficile.
No reader comments yet - add yours See related articles: Activism, Addiction and Recovery, Canada, Crime, General, Issues, Wisdom and its absence 
Bill Clark6/23/2008: The Tennis racket
Wimbledon fears match-fixing scandal in massive betting scam - The Times
Match-fixers can exploit the odds to share out six-figure sums, leaving significant profits even after paying off a player the loss of prize money for throwing a match. One player has gone on record saying he turned down a £70,000 bung to lose in the first round at Wimbledon. The prize for losing in the first round this year is £10,250.
It is believed Russian and eastern European gamblers are behind much of the illegal betting, although the dossier also names a gang of Austrian gamblers.
An official with detailed knowledge of the dossier of 140 “suspect” matches from tournaments around the world said: “If you look at a tournament, you might see one match for £23,000 [in betting turnover], one for £27,000, one for £36,000 and one for £4.5m. It doesn’t take a genius to work out that something is going on in the last one.”
6/23/2008: The Slot
Slot.
What an ugly 4 letter word.
In the dictionary the next word is sloth, and then comes slothful.
But we are here to talk about slots.
Sittman and Pitt of Brooklyn, New York, U.S.A. developed a gambling machine in 1891 which was a precursor to the modern slot machine. It contained five drums holding a total of 50 card faces and was based on poker. This machine proved extremely popular and soon many bars in the city had one or more of the machines bar-side. Players would insert a nickel and pull a lever, which would spin the drums and the cards they held, the player hoping for a good poker hand.
There was no direct payout mechanism, so a pair of kings might get the player a free beer, whereas a royal flush could pay out cigars or drinks, the prizes wholly dependent on what was on offer at the local establishment. To make the odds better for the house, two cards were typically removed from the deck the ten of spades and the jack of hearts which cut the odds of winning a royal flush by half. The drums could also be re-arranged to further reduce a player’s chance of winning.
The first one-armed bandit was invented in 1887 by Charles Fey of San Francisco U.S.A, who devised a much simpler automatic mechanism. due to the vast number of possible wins with the original poker card based game, it proved practically impossible to come up with a way to make a machine capable of making an automatic pay-out for all possible winning combinations. Charles Fey devised a machine with three spinning reels containing a total of five symbols – horseshoes, diamonds, spades, hearts and a Liberty Bell which also gave the machine its name. By replacing ten cards with five symbols and using three reels instead of five drums, the complexity of reading a win was considerably reduced, allowing Fey to devise an effective automatic payout mechanism. Three bells in a row produced the biggest payoff, ten nickels. Liberty Bell was a huge success and spawned a thriving mechanical gaming device industry. Even when the use of these gambling devices was banned in his home state after a few years, Fey still couldn’t keep up with demand for the game elsewhere.
Another early machine gave out winnings in the form of fruit flavored chewing gums with pictures of the flavors as symbols on the reels. The popular cherry and melon symbols derive from this machine. The BAR symbol now common in slot machines was derived from an early logo of the Bell Fruit Gum Company. In 1964, Bally developed the first fully electromechanical slot machine called Money Honey. The new electromechanical approach allowed Money Honey to be the first slot machine with a bottomless hopper and automatic payout, of up to 500 coins, without the help of an attendant.
The first video slot machine to offer a second-screen bonus round was Reel ‘Em In developed by W M S Industries Co. in 1996.
In 2007 a class action suit was brought against The Atlantic Lottery Corporation, by Ches Crosbie Barristers on behalf of the Piercy family and all residents of Newfoundland and Labrador.
earlier Gambling Watch Global coverage
Read the Affidavit of Kevin Harrigan, PhD; University of Waterloo in Ontario.
Harrigan explains the insides of a modern slot machine.
In the early 50s, B F Skinner, a psychologist testing animals for a process called intermittent rewarding made this statement: ”pigeon, rat, or human, all can become addicted to this process.”
This is the process used by slot machine.
There are also standard 3 - 5 reel slot machines, of various types.
These are the typical one-armed bandits.
The one armed bandits proved to be very popular, read addictive.
This was the initial cocaine effect.
Much later came the term which soon became a label; the crack cocaine of gambling.
Slots, VLTs, are the equivalent of designer drugs and very effective.
Addiction comes as the result of all the added special effects, lights, music, even theme music and bells to signal everyone around that this slot machine paid out.
A moderate slot in one of Ontario’s smaller race tracks will earn 300 dollars per day.
A slot at a place such as Woodbine, will earn over $600 per day.
For the owner, not the player, btw.
There are some 24,000 slots in Ontario.
24,000 x $600.00 = 14 million/day = 5 +/- billion yearly.
Machines have no union for their owners to deal with.
Yes the gambling industry does provide some 7,000 jobs in the province, but it wastes some 100,000 plus job expenditures that bypass small businesses.
If, as we are told, small business is the economic engine for provinces such as Ontario, how can we have a government starve this engine by spending millions of dollars promoting gambling and ignoring the social cost?
Worse still in 2004, a report saying there were some 450,000 addicted gamblers in Ontario.
Is this duty of care to turn a tax paying citizen into a criminal or a a service needy citizen.
Probe into addictive gambling slot machines launched in the UK.
No reader comments yet - add yours See related articles: Activism, Addiction and Recovery, Canada, General, Litigation, Wisdom and its absence
Bill Clark6/19/2008: Gambling Watch Canada
Good News
Data and address contacts are intact after a computer crash and we should have the Canada newsletter back shortly.
As for gamblingwatchglobal we are looking at with 3 pending lawsuits in 3 provinces, with close to 2/3rds of our population up in arms.
The lawsuits in Newfoundland and Labrador, Quebec and Ontario deal with VLT’s, self-exclusion and addiction treatment.
Ontario has 3 race track slots on strike, and OLG is lamenting.
Strange, no one is happy that these communities get 100 cents on the dollar for business
instead of the 2% handout back from the large number of whole dollars syphoned out by the OLG.
What would happen if all gambling was shut down and that 10 billion dollars in Ontario went back to the business community locally and stayed in Ontario ?
The law suits we are covering are all about cash flow crash flow.
No reader comments yet - add yours See related articles: Activism, Canada, Gambling Watch Canada Network Newsletter, General, Litigation 
bill clark6/16/2008: Status of Newfoundland and Labrador Class Action Piercey/Atlantic Lottery Corporation
In 2007 a class action suit was brought against The Atlantic Lottery Corporation. Ches Crosby Barristers:
The class action has been brought by the Piercey family on behalf of all residents of Newfoundland and Labrador who have gambled on VLTs. The Plaintiffs say that Atlantic Lotto knows or ought to know that VLTs are inherently deceptive, inherently addictive, and inherently dangerous when used as intended, but has embarked on a “responsible gaming strategy” with messages to consumers which place the onus of responsibility for control and the resulting harm from loss of control on consumers. The purpose of this message strategy is to blame consumers for problem gambling and divert attention from the fact that problem gambling is a natural result of design features of the VLT.
The Plaintiffs say that VLTs do not comply with consumer protection law, specifically the Trade Practices Act of Newfoundland and Labrador. The class action seeks relief in the nature of an aggregate monetary award and such other relief that the court considers appropriate.
Full text of the statement of claim
News coverage:
CBC - VLT suicides’ families want machines banned June 27, 2005
No reader comments yet - add yours See related articles: Activism, Canada, General, Litigation 
Administrator6/16/2008: Australians March against pokies
This Silent Scream March in Australia is being held to protest VLT’s and the lack of resources for problem gamblers.
Problem gamblers, counsellors, clinicians, researchers, activists and members of the public, your anonymity is assured!
No Pokies Senator Nick Xenophon, and Fairfield City Councillor Thang Ngo will be joining us on the day.
Come and meet them.World Vision CEO Tim Costello, NSW Greens MLC Lee Rhiannon and Family First
Senator Steve Fielding have been invited and (schedules permitting) will join us on the day and speak with the marchers.Thank you for helping make this day, one the government will be unable to ignore!
When: Sunday August 24th, 2008
Where: Tumbalong Park, Darling Harbour, Sydney
Gather: 10:30 am
March begins at 11:30
Contact: nellgwyn55 (at) bigpond (dot) com
6/14/2008: No newsletter this week
A $3.5-billion class action lawsuit has been launched on behalf of thousands
of addicted gamblers who say they asked to be barred from Ontario’s casinos,
but were still allowed in.The suit was filed against the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation on
Tuesday in Toronto, claiming that the corporation did not do enough for
those who signed up for “self-exclusion,” a program that allows people to
have themselves banned from casinos so that they can curb their ruinous
gambling habits.
One of the law firms that has filed the statement of claim is Adair Morse. The 51 page claim was filed in The Ontario Superior Court of Justice Monday, June 9, 2008.
More information on this class action suit and where you can register here.
What a week !
Gambling watch computer has a major glitch, so no newsletter this week.
A Toronto Law Firm has launched a class action law suit against OLG. 3.5 b dollars.
3,500,000,000 I think is the number.
Ten thousand signed in to particate, and we are told there are close to 500,000 addicted gamblers in Ontario.
The point is addicted gamblers registered to have themselves excluded, and
they were allowed,nay; encouraged, to continue gambling. Little wonder.
Close to half of gambling dollars are the losses of maybe 5 % of gamblers.
Gambling revenues are already down at many Canadian operations, and if as few as 10 to 20% of gamblers stop gambling, what then? Not to mention gas at $ 1.50 to $2.00 per litre.
Hopefully our newsletter will be back next week!
No reader comments yet - add yours See related articles: Activism, Canada, General, Issues
Bill Clark5/22/2008: Canada’s Gambling Watch Network Newsletter
Canada’s Gambling Watch Network’s weekly e-mailed Newsletter
Volume 9 Issue 030 CWE May 19, 2008
Finance
US gambling revenue increases 5.3 per cent is an item in the 5/15/08 Toronto Star giving these figures:
The American Gaming Association says 2007 commercial casino revenues in the U.S.A. hit $34.1 billion (U.S.), up 5.3 per cent from the previous year.
Poker
A 5/12/08 Toronto Sun article reports that Jack “PapaJack” Hinchey, a 49-year-old plumber from Oshawa, won $1M in the Spanish World Poker Crown tournament.
Sports Gambling
Charles Barkley acknowledged he owes a $400,000 (U.S.) gambling debt to a Las Vegas Strip casino and promised yesterday to repay it after a prosecutor said the retired NBA star faced criminal charges,
says The 5/16/08 Toronto Star. Barkley estimated during a 2006 interview that he’d gambled away about $10 million over the years.
“Do I have a gambling problem? Yeah, I do have a gambling problem,” Barkley said. “But I don’t consider it a problem because I can afford to gamble.”
Across our border
Work is underway on the Seneca Nation’s planned permanent downtown Buffalo casino is a line from the 5/17 Buffalo, N.Y. WIVB TV Station.
Horseracing
Horse racing industry stumbles over thoroughbred deaths, an item in The 5/16 Morning Call, is a 4-page article that provides a lot of information about what is done to horses in the races. It brought Roger Horbay to write:
I think it is simply time to ban the cruel “sport” of horse racing and shut down these tracks altogether. They have already sucked over $2 billion out of slot money that could have been spent on health or fixing our awful roads.
I believe that most of us agree with that suggestion. A 5/16/08 Chronicle Journal AP item that reached us later reports that in Puerto Rico horses that lose a race are regularly condemned to die. Doesn’t that news underline how cruel that ‘sport’ is?
British Columbia
Government is addicted to revenues from gambling is the title of a letter to the editor that appeared in The 5/12/08 Vancouver Sun. It calls the government’s hiring of 8 gambling information officers for the thousands of gambling addicts produced by the province’s expansion of gambling laughably inadequate:
Re: Government hires 8 gambling information officers, May 2
Laughably inadequate is the only way to describe this government’s hiring of eight ‘gambling information officers’ for the thousands of gambling addicts produced by the province’s expansion of gambling.
The greater problem is that our government has become addicted to gaming revenues. And that’s when the light bulb flashed on over my head!
Don’t have the gambling information officers struggle to serve all the addicts in the casinos. Have them go to the source of the problem. Let them work on the government addicts who are hooked on the revenues!
Can the gambling information officers get the government to ‘play responsibly’ and stop expanding the number of casinos?
And then maybe they can help our government overcome its addiction to tobacco revenues. Tobacco doesn’t (quite) bankrupt people like gambling addiction, although its cost is very hard on those living in poverty or on disability. But tobacco has that other unfortunate problem; it kills thousand of its consumers annually.
Paul Glassen
Nanaimo
[See The Tyee: Broken Promise on Gambling Suicides-Admin]
On 5/13/08 this paper reports that the Las Vegas owners of Vancouver’s Edgewater Casino have spent $5M to better the facility since buying it 20 months ago and their investment is paying off since the city’s share of its revenues rose 18% in the year ending 3/31/08. The item talks of plans for future enlargement of the facility and we expect to hear more of those plans later. One of them is to double the parking spaces.
In the same issue of this paper a letter to the editor says:
The introduction of slot machines at Newton’s bingo hall is a reminder of the fundamental betrayal by Surrey’s B.C. Liberal MLAs on this issue.
Gordon Campbell’s government came to office with a steel-clad promise to “stop the expansion of gambling that has increased gambling addiction and put new strains on families.”
There were 2,400 slot machines when the Liberals gave their word to the people of British Columbia. Now there are 9,000.
Liberal MLAs still refuse to tell us why they broke this commitment. Also, let us not forget that in 2002, as a member of Surrey’s gaming committee, Mayor Dianne Watts was steadfastly opposed to opening up Surrey communities to slots.
B.C. Liberal promises made — B.C. Liberal promises broken.
DEBORAH PAYMENT
Surrey
On the same day The Province has an article with the heading: How gambling’s bandit machines may be robbing the punters blind. This article quotes our Roger Horbay who explains how Electronic Gambling Machines are programmed to make people believe they’re winning while they are really loosing.
Gambling’s success is built on the success of electronic gaming machines — not card games, lotteries, the roll of the dice or bingo.
The machines’ profitability is what is driving the explosion of gambling in your province and around the world.
We have discovered how (the machines) really work and why they are so damn profitable. It’s time to expose this fraud.
Rail corridor foundation gets $300,000 from casino owner, says The 5/14/08 Times Colonist. The Great Canadian Gaming Corp., the owner of the View Royal casino had intended that the cheque presentation would be used as staging for the official groundbreaking of the casino’s $48-million expansion, but executives were fogged in on the mainland and couldn’t make the flight. The Province says;
The View Royal casino now has a floor area of about 32,000 square feet and features 437 slot machines, 24 table games and food and beverage areas. The redevelopment will increase the existing floor area by about 24,000 square feet to accommodate new gaming facilities, including more slots, a poker room and a teletheatre. The company is planning to expand food and beverage facilities to include a new lounge that will feature live entertainment. The expansion of the liquor licence will allow the casino to serve liquor in the areas adjacent to the gaming floor.
Alberta
Gambler admits to $512,000 fraud is the title of an article in The 5/14/08 Calgary Herald that contains this line:
The former controller of a Calgary auto dealership has admitted she embezzled more than a half million dollars from her employer through false GST credits to feed a gambling habit.
On 7/29/08 the lawyers are planning to make their final sentencing arguments before provincial court Judge Terry Semenuk.
“A judicial battle could be brewing after an Edmonton judge yesterday slammed Alberta’s highest court for paying ‘lip service’ to directions from the Supreme Court” is the first sentence in a 5/16/08 Edmonton Sun article that points to the lack of conditional sentences for people convicted of embezzlement. We expect to hear more about this issue later.
In The Edmonton Journal of the same day we find this sentence: “A former Edmonton bank supervisor who embezzled money from her employer and her cancer-stricken father to feed her gambling addiction was given a nine-month conditional sentence Thursday’.
We wonder: will we hear more about this conditional sentence as well?
Manitoba
The 5/18/08 Winnipeg Sun writes that - despite the new smoking ban - South Beach Casino had 500 patrons at its games in the expanded facility about 30 km northeast of Winnipeg.
Ontario
The 5/138 Niagara Falls Review lists the amounts the Niagara Casino’s Cares Foundation gave to local community initiatives in April. We quote: The foundation “handed out cheques worth $300,000 throughout the month – giving cash to everything from the Heart and Stroke Foundation’s Big Bike Ride, the Ranking Cancer Run and the Misty Awards to financial assistance for Kiwanis International’s upcoming convention in Niagara Falls, the Rotary Ribfest and Project SHARE. The foundation also sent its third of five $200,000 cheques for commitments to the new emergency room at Greater Niagara General Hospital and the construction of the Walker Family Cancer Centre. Other donations include:
$40,000 toward the Niagara College Foundation’s Seafood Gala,
$15,000 to the Niagara Parks Commission for the summer firework displays,
$10,000 to the Princess Margaret Hospital Foundation to sponsor a local team in the Ride to Conquer Cancer,
$10,000 to the Niagara Wine Auction,
$5,250 to the Ontario Lottery and Gaming charity slo-pitch tournament,
$5,000 to the Binational Tourism Alliance for its summit in Buffalo,
$2,500 for the city’s annual Canada Day celebrations,
$2,500 to the Boys and Girls Club of Niagara Falls annual golf tournament,
$2,000 to the St. Catharines General Hospital Foundation for its annual jazz concert
This report would be complete if we could figure out how much casino patrons defrauded from their employers, how many marriages broke up due to gambling problems, how many casino patrons committed suicides, etc. etc. It’s a sad fact that so far no Canadian Financial experts have calculated the net financial damage gambling is causing, like some experts have done in the U.S.A. (Look also at our Australia section)
The Niagara Falls paper has thee articles on local casinos on 5/16. Casinos mum on buyout response reports that a spokesman for the company that manages both Niagara’s casinos stated by e-mail that the info available at this time is much too preliminary.
In Parade outside casino we’re told that two unions had troubles with each other, that most of the casinos’ 5,000 employees are not unionized and that Security staff are the only workers who’ve joined a union since Casino Niagara opened in 1996; they belong to the Ontario Public Service Employees Union. Here is a quote that might explain that situation:
“As an organization, we have always maintained that we prefer to speak directly to our associates rather than speak to them through a third-party such as the CAW,” Niagara Casinos spokesman Greg Medulun said.
Unions duel for right to organize casinos reports that “The Canadian Auto Workers and the Labourers International Union of North America both say recent wage freezes and buyout packages are proof casino workers need union representation”. This three-page article contains much information we have given in our previous Newsletters. If one of these unions wins the battle, we’ll hear more about it in the future.
Woman accused of fraud in bingos is an article in The 5/16/08 Brockville Recorder and Times reporting that the person accused of this fraud of more than $12,000 said she’s not guilty. The court case will continue later.
Newfoundland
In Province targets problem gambling, an item in The 5/13/08 Telegram, we’re told that the government launched a new campaign to target problem gambling: 4 ads and posters depicting people of various ages will be running on NTV and CBC-TV for the rest of 2008, and the posters will be sent to doctor’s offices and other establishments reaching out to people with gambling problems, letting them know help is available. [GWG prior coverage - admin]
Nova Scotia
Man: VLT dispute led to fatal exchange is a story in The 5/13/08 Halifax Herald about the court case against a VLT player who is charged with second-degree murder and robbery with violence because he lost his temper when the bar tender wanted to close the VLT he was playing. The case is continuing.
Cape Breton company hits jackpot, an article in the same issue of the paper writes:
Techlink Entertainment won a $6-million to $8-million contract last November to outfit the province’s 2,800 VLTs with a system that allows players to set their own spending limits. After clinching that deal, the firm’s president and CEO said he feels confident that international customers will follow.
No winning ticket is the title of an item in The 5/15/08 Amherst Daily News reporting that three local retailers have their lottery privileges suspended for five days because they - among other faults – sold tickets to minors. The next day’s Halifax Herald reports that 9 Amherst stores were caught selling to kids and were suspended for 5 days.
Australia
The 5/12/08 Herald and Weekly Times writes that the research by the forensic accountancy firm Warfield and Associates found that $102M was stolen by 152 gambling addicted fraudsters in the Victoria state in the past 10 years.
No reader comments yet - add yours See related articles: Canada, Gambling Watch Canada Network Newsletter, General 
J. Deviet