Thank you, Madam Chair, and good morning to members of the committee. It's a pleasure to be speaking to you today on the topic of single-event sports wagering.
My name is Zane Hansen and I am the president and CEO of the Saskatchewan Indian Gaming Authority, SIGA for short.
I will quickly give you some background on our company. SIGA is a casino operator situated in Saskatchewan. We are owned by the 74 first nations in our province. About 25 years ago, our first nations collectively reached an agreement with the province to guide the development of casinos in Saskatchewan.
Our purpose for getting into the casino business is not unlike other jurisdictions. We view the industry as a means to create employment, support economic development and raise revenues for our communities.
Since the early 1990s, the industry certainly has been quite resilient and has delivered very well on expected benefits. From our perspective at SIGA, we've done very well, developing seven regional casino markets. We've created employment through that for over 1,800 individuals, of whom 65% or more are of first nations origin.
Supporting on-reserve economic development was key as well. That helps build local infrastructure and tax bases for our first nations communities. As a non-profit, we annually return millions of dollars to our first nations communities, the provincial government and our regional charity foundations. In the context of first nations development, these benefits have been of critical importance.
As we all know, we're not in normal times. COVID-19 brought our sector to an abrupt halt almost a year ago. Like most casinos across Canada now, our properties are currently closed. At this point, our company faces mounting losses and we have now placed about 93% of our employees on various forms of leave.
I want to say we're grateful for the wage subsidy program implemented by the federal government. That has been key to our survival through this year. While the impacts are painful, we also understand the difficult measures that need to be taken to address this and to counter the virus. We all must find our way through this very difficult situation.
One tool that will help us recover is single-event wagering. This is an important piece of legislation that will really assist operators across the country.
I would say the gaming industry is no different from other sectors of the economy where advances in technology and evolving customer preferences drive continuous change. Single-event sports wagering is the perfect example of that. Customers prefer it because it is a more dynamic form of wagering and it primarily takes place under relatively newer channels to deliver gaming, which are online and mobile.
You will hear of many positions to support single-event wagering. I'll just share a few from our view as an operator.
First, we simply want the opportunity to compete and offer a product that our customers like. We see, of course, the unregulated “grey” market conducting business in our province, taking a lot of money out and not returning benefits to our stakeholders. You will see, across the country, that gaming operators are also heavily invested in the industry. Single-event wagering will bring further investment as companies look for ways to enhance the gaming entertainment experience based on sport.
To give you an example of that, single-event wagering is a perfect opportunity to take a multi-channel view with our customers. We can enhance and modify the food and beverage formats within our casinos, and we can complement that with the other channel of online or mobile, where people can bet that way. This will not only diversify our revenue base, it will also drive reinvestment and employment back into our casinos, once legislated.
It also protects the interests of our customers. As regulated operators, we make sure our customers are well informed on the games we provide and the integrity of the game is preserved. As legal operators, we are held to high standards of accountability in areas such as industry regulation, responsible gaming and processing of financial transactions. I think it would improve that whole area.
Those are just a few of the reasons we see single-event wagering as such an important part of our future.
As a casino operator and on behalf of SIGA and our stakeholders here in Saskatchewan, I want to thank you for the opportunity to speak today.