No, there were no free drinks. There are no free drinks anywhere any more.
It was properly regulated. The first thing it indicated was that this gaming corporation was sanctioned and regulated by the Government of the Duchy of Liechtenstein according to internationally accepted guidelines and procedures. I had a bit of comfort that I was not dealing with the mob. I was not dealing with somebody some place down in the United State, Aruba or somewhere running a scam on the Internet.
If I wanted to do my scratch and wins I had to set up my account. I had to be verified. If I won, it automatically went into my bank account in Canada just like that, an instantaneous transaction.
The hon. member's bill does two things. It focuses on whether or not gaming is something that grown adults in a modern democracy should be allowed to access. I think it is a matter of choice. I know people sometimes get addicted to gambling. People get addicted to many things: cigarettes, driving their cars around the block too often or laying on a beach and getting sunburned.
We cannot take those few people who legitimately have a problem and say to everybody else that they will be barred from free choice. The free choice is there now. It exists. It is out in cyberspace. It is on the Internet. We can do it today from the comfort of our rec rooms.
The hon. member's bill says that if this is now happening the Canadian government should look at whether or not it should regulate it, whether or not in this era of regulation the Canadian government wishes to get involved with it.
It begs other important questions, not just ones on regulations. It begs some important questions about provincial government involvement. A few years ago there were lotteries and it was never conceived that there would an Internet with 50 million users and bumbling people could actually sit in their rec rooms and find something on it, talk to somebody around the world and get into the Liechtenstein Corporation Gaming casino.
The bill asks whether it is reasonable that the Government of Canada should consider whether it wants to be in the business and if it is in the business how it relates to the provincial governments and the previous agreements on lotteries that were made a few years ago. It brings up the whole issue of regulation on the Internet and the protection of Canadian consumers.
Somebody browsing on the Internet tonight may get hooked up with a casino somewhere down in the South Pacific run by a hacker with a big bank account, wearing a pair of shorts, drinking a pina colada and laughing all the way to the bank. If such people know the Canadian government or the provincial governments have the proper systems and safeguards in their lottery acts, and if they are going to get into video gambling and video lottery, they would probably choose to do it from the highly distinguished regulatory regime of the Canadian provincial and federal government.
I am very pleased to have spoken on the bill. Once again the hon. member has brought forward a piece of legislation that is both timely in terms of revenue and in terms of the issues of the day. I
hope at the end of this hour to see the entire subject matter referred to committee so the broad range of issues that must be dealt with are dealt with in a timely fashion. I hope people on both sides of the issue will be accorded the time to put forth their points and hopefully we will have come to a conclusion and a recommendation to government.