SIGA keeps telling us about the money. We keep telling them about the product. We want to rejuvenate our downtown core. We welcome entertainment industry initiatives. What we don't welcome is a "suck-only" industry dead smack in the middle of our city.
SIGA reminds us we already have a casino. That's quite true. We certainly have. They make a good case for improving it too. I've seen it. If we're going to have one, it certainly should be somewhat nicer I suppose. However, this is about location. There is a distinctive difference between having gambling located in the Exibition grounds versus locating it downtown. Currently it's tucked away by the horse track. Frankly the track could use an injection of the kind of money SIGA plans to spend as well as the casino. I asked them at the public meeting why they must locate downtown. The answer was a doublespeak miracle with catchwords like "synergy" which essentially said "because that's where we want it."
This is nonsense. We have a marvellous area already zoned to allow for this activity. It's a nice remote distance from the inner city neighborhoods and night clubs. You can take a bus there, you can drive, you can take a bicycle even, but few would walk there, let alone wander in without planning. Build it downtown and you get a whole new class of customer, the walk-in traffic.
Isn't that really what this debate is about? How easy do we want to make gambling? How attractive do we really want it to be? We already grumble mightily over the damndable VLTs and bingo halls. Now they are suggesting wrapping it up in crystal and tinsel, illuminating it with neon and spotlights. You'll be a loser, but maybe in all that glitter you'll feel rich anyway.
Now lets consider the amount of money these people are talking about; The amount they have to invest, and that they are willing to invest it, the money they promise to local social initiatives, the money they plan to spend on overhead and upkeep. Phenomenal amounts of money are being talked about and where do you think it came from? Broken dreams: people who gambled and lost. The odds always favour the house, always.
This is not part of the image of Saskatoon. We are a beautiful, proud, intelligent, bright city on a shining river. Our skies are blue and our streets relatively clean. We've done pretty good to our humble beginnings as a temperance colony in a world of drinking.
SIGA talks about tourists. Who are these tourists? Will people drive up here from Nevada to use our casino? Chronic gamblers booted out of the other SIGA casinos? Rural Saskatchewanians? I don't think Gambling is really what draws people here. From my conversations with people via the net, it's the clean air, the nearby northern woods, and the friendly people that draw tourists. The most often heard word is "camping". So, if we want tourists, why aren't we focussing on what they want here?
Saskatoon citizens deserve the chance to vote and show their wishes on this issue, it is an issue not only of morals and economics but of character and image. We who live here must have the right, in a matter so important to so many of us, to speak up and define who we are as a community.
October 2002