After a year of contentious debate, Toronto City Council has voted overwhelmingly to kill a proposed multibillion-dollar downtown casino.
The 40-4 vote occurred at a special meeting called by a majority of councillors after Mayor Rob Ford, an outspoken advocate of the casino, succeeded in postponing the vote earlier this month while he tried to wrest for the city a larger share of the casino’s potential revenue from the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation, the provincial regulator, which has been pushing a casino in Canada’s largest city as the centerpiece of a province-wide gambling privatization scheme.
Proponents believed it would take a minimum of C$100 million to persuade council to back the plan. But after City Manager Joe Pennachetti released new figures last week showing the city would be paid at most a $40 million hosting fee, Mr Ford tried to cancel the vote outright, declaring the proposed casino “dead”. The administration had sought upwards of C$150 million a year from the OLG, a sum far exceeding the normal hosting fee paid to the rest of the province. But when other cities protested the plan was ordered off the table by Premier Kathleen Wynne.
Ms Wynne’s predecessor, Dalton McGuinty, supported the OLG’s reforms while Ms Wynne, who took over leadership of the govering Liberal Party in February, has been skeptical, and full-scale privatization now appears in doubt after she fired OLG head Paul Godfrey earler this month, prompting the corporation’s board to resign. It is believed the funding controversy figured prominently in Mr Godfrey’s ouster.
Anti-casino forces in Toronto that have fought the proposal for the past year were delighted with its defeat.
“We could only hope way back when that this would be the outcome, and the fact it is the outcome, we are ecstatic,” said Peggy Calvert of No Casino Toronto. “We couldn’t be more ecstatic.”
Las Vegas-based casino giants MGM Resorts International and Caesars Entertainment had floated proposals for multibillion-dollar destination resorts for the downtown area and together with Mr Ford had lobbied councillors hard for their endorsement. They said such a facility would bring 10,000 direct jobs and hundreds of millions in economic benefits to the city. Foes on council, however, joined by an array of opponents that included community groups, public health officials, academics, religious leaders and a strong grassroots campaign led by No Casino Toronto, questioned those projections and succeeded in swaying public opinion by arguing that the potential benefits would be outweighed by the social and economic costs and would impose massive strains on infrastructure and law enforcement.
In a speech to council before the vote, Mr Ford called on members to consider expanding the casino at suburban Woodbine Racetrack as an alternative. City officials have suggested raising the track’s slot machine inventory to 4,500 from 3,000 currently and adding 150 table games. But in separate balloting council voted 24-20 against it.
The speech constituted the mayor’s first public remarks since news reports appeared this month about a video allegedly showing him smoking crack. He made no mention of the controversy in his response to the casino vote. He avoided reporters and left city hall afterward, according to reports.
