Mr. Speaker, budget debates are a time traditionally when members of parliament can raise other issues in the House that bear some relationship to things fiscal and financial. I am particularly pleased to see the member for Elk Island here today in the House as I make my speech because the member for Elk Island was on of two members of parliament in this House who raised the issue of gambling and criticized gambling as a problem that is afflicting Canadian society, during a debate in 1998 that had to with controlled substances.
It was Bill C-51 and that also included the government's proposal that the criminal code be amended so that casino gambling could take place onboard ships. The member took the opportunity to raise the issue to express his concern that gambling in general had become a problem across the United States certainly but across Canada.
The member for Winnipeg--Transcona also raised the issue during that debate. He has a particular interest in it because there are two casinos in Winnipeg and gambling in general in Manitoba is an example where people are genuinely suffering.
The problem is that no one wants to talk about it any more. Nobody is talking about it at all other than these two instances in the House but gambling has become a scourge, an affliction that is doing all kinds of social damage to Canadians at every economic level in society.
Six hundred thousand to a million Canadians are problem gamblers. We have situations where people are losing their houses. They are losing all their worldly goods. They are going to the casino or sometimes the bingo halls, usually the casinos or even worse the video lottery terminals, and they are losing hundreds if not thousands of dollars in a single event. There is a relationship between this occurrence and an increase in certain areas of crime because of course these people have to pay for their habits.
I should help you recall, Mr. Speaker, that up until 1969 the criminal code forbade gambling and under pressure from the provinces the federal government amended the code to allow lotteries, and you will remember Lotto Canada started in 1969. Only a year later the provinces persuaded the federal government to offload the responsibility or the right to raise money by gambling through lotteries to the provinces. That was done in exchange for some $30 million. That was the revenue that the federal government was to get in exchange for giving this right to the provinces.
That has never changed except through inflation. The federal government's total take on gambling across the country after these amendments to the criminal code, and most of the gambling is conducted by the provinces, is only $43 million but the total take of the provinces is $9 billion. That is not the figure that really should concern us. The total money spent by people in casinos, at video display terminals and at the track is $27 billion.
What has happened is that the provincial governments and the charities indeed have become addicted themselves to revenues from gambling. They pay no attention to the social costs. I invite you to do as I have done. I go across the country. I am not a gambler, but I go to every casino that I can and it is amazing to see the social differences in casinos. In the casino in Montreal, for example, it is mostly high stakes tables. In the casino in Winnipeg it is nickel slot machines.
We can see the clientele in the casino in Winnipeg. The people are on social assistance and are senior citizens. What we cannot see and what the few studies that we do have are pointing out is that this scourge of gambling is reaching into the middle class as well. What is happening is the people who are well educated, people who have university degrees and who have good jobs, are now going to these casinos and to these video lottery terminals and are spending money.
The irony is that we are destroying people's lives through these gambling institutions that every province is now supporting and most charities are supporting. We are destroying lives and we are giving nothing in return. There is almost no money being spent on trying to rescue people who have been afflicted by gambling.
Every one of us knows that we do not need fabulous studies to see in our communities people whose lives have been destroyed by gambling. The irony is that if it was not for the fact that the federal government amended the criminal code, if it was not for the fact that the provinces have set up casinos and VLTs wherever they can, these people would not be victims of the disease that afflicts them. We know that gambling is very like alcoholism. It is a weakness we are basically born with, and when the temptation is presented, some people, no matter what their best intentions, are going to fall victim to it.
We are doing nothing about it. All we are doing is pocketing the money and it is basically the provinces that are pocketing the money.
I will give you an example, Mr. Speaker. Federally we spend $90 million a year on the tobacco reduction strategy. We spend nothing to help problem gambling across the country. There is the odd $100,000 here or there to some social agency that has it as part of its mandate, but there is no plan, no strategy, at the federal level and nothing at the provincial level to actually address the problem of problem gamblers.
We are talking about 4% to 6% of all the people who have access to gambling venues. These are the ones who are problem gamblers who cannot control their habit, or pathological gamblers, where they go and go and they will rob banks and will do anything that is necessary in order to feed their habit. This is a very serious affliction.
I feel very strongly that the House has to address the problem of gambling, because it is not going to come from the provinces. I will give the example of Ontario. Ontario takes in $2 billion in profit from gambling. It says “Ah well, this money is going to be used for charity”, but it gives only 5%, that is 5%, to the Trillium Foundation of that $2 billion. That is the charitable component. Instead, the rest of the money goes to enable the provincial government not to raise taxes.
Mr. Speaker, I will tell you that if gambling is the source of revenue that replaces raising taxes, then what you are doing is raising taxes on the weak and the poor and you are taking advantage of people's weaknesses. I only have contempt for charities that take that money, take the $100 million from the Ontario government and purport to use it in the public interest when in fact, in a very real sense, if the money comes from casino gambling or VLTs and charities are using it, then in every sense it is blood money.
We have to, as a parliament, do something about this.