A coalition of nine local health agencies is condemning what it calls a lack of public consultation by the city in the planning process for a new downtown casino.
The group, led by the Centretown Community Health Centre, is calling for more community involvement in the development of a casino and wants more acknowledgment of the social harms that would be associated with it, says CCHC president Jeff Morrison.
The centres came together after council provided only one opportunity for public discussion before voting last October to move forward with a plan for the casino’s development, Morrison says.
Somerset Coun. Diane Holmes initially supported the development of a casino.
But she says there was not enough public consultation before the vote went to council.
“It was rushed through,” she says. “At the time, we were told there was a need to provide an answer back to the province in a very short time frame, which then turned out not to be true.”
Since then, the planning process has taken place “behind closed doors,” leaving key stakeholders unaware of important information, such as proposed locations of the casino, Morrison says.
The public won’t find out where the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corp. is planning to build the casino until it submits its final proposal to council at the end of the year.
Although it makes sense to put the casino downtown, a more convenient location would also inevitably cause a lot of social harm to the community, says Rob Dekker, vice-president of the Centretown Citizens Community Association.
Centretown houses a “large, vulnerable community ”that would be hit hard by the convenience of a casino, Dekker says.
Research shows that accessibility to a casino is a “huge determinant” affecting addiction rates in cities, Morrison says.
“The easier you make it to access (a casino), the greater the risk of addiction problems,” he says.
The CCHC is one of two health centres in Ottawa that offers counselling for gambling addictions. Morrison says he doubts that the centre would be able to meet the demand that a downtown casino could place on its counselling services.
He says he’s “disappointed” that city council has chosen to ignore the potential harms of a new casino and focus on the benefits, such as an economic boom in the downtown core.
Holmes isn’t convinced that there will be any sort of economic benefit attached to the new casino.
One of her biggest concerns is that customers of the casino won’t necessarily become customers of other businesses located around it, she says.
“The casino itself absorbs all of the money of the people who come to use it,” she says. “They don’t generally go out to use the facilities of other businesses in the area.”
The city also can’t afford other costs that come with a casino, such as addictions counselling and extra policing, she says. The city will not receive enough of the casino’s potential revenues to fully offset these costs, she says.
“The health money is at best $740,000, which is a drop in the bucket,” Holmes says.
If the casino is still built despite such concerns, the health centres recommend that city council impose harm-reduction guidelines within the casino, Morrison says.
Some of these include having limited hours of operation, not having ATMs located inside, and allowing for natural light within the building, he says.
Going forward, stakeholders hope that city officials will be more willing to hear public opinion a future casino.
“We hope that city council will open its ears a little wider and listen to members of the community, not only in Centretown, but other communities that will be affected by a casino in the downtown core,” Dekker says.