Madam Speaker, I have never seen a study connecting gambling to household bankruptcies but I suspect there is probably a correlation there.
If we look at the number of people who become addicted to the practice of gambling, more damaging than casinos, and I am familiar with the casino in my home city of Regina, are the VLTs that have sprung up like mushrooms all over the country. The VLTs are sort of the crack cocaine of the gambling world. A lot of ordinary folk without much cash can go in and spend a lot of money. They get addicted to that particular practice. That is something we should probably take a look at as a parliament and at the provincial jurisdiction as well. That may be one of the factors.
Whether it is or not, the fact of the matter is the gap between the rich and the poor is widening instead of narrowing in a society that is very wealthy. As a Canadian that really disturbs me. We have to look at how we can turn that around. We were doing that particularly throughout the sixties but also into the seventies with some of the new social programs and changes in the tax system. Now all of a sudden we have gone in the other direction.