I mean, when the media are openly debating whether the mayor has a substance abuse problem, the issue of his professional competency must be coming into question for the Bay Street honchos who’ve bet serious money on him.
They’re beginning to find out, if they didn’t know already, that when the chips are down, Rofo can’t be counted on to deliver. Ford’s never truthfully had the stomach for the job of mayor.
That’s never been truer than on the other issue, beside’s Thomson’s ass, now wreaking havoc at City Hall: the downtown Toronto casino monkey business, on which mucho dinero is riding. What a gong show its become.
Looks like the major Vegas players, too busy blinding us with fictitious numbers, left their PR push for council’s crucial vote a little late, thinking maybe the fix was already in.
But the masses aren’t buying the flashy artists renderings or promise of jobs, jobs, jobs if the sparse crowd that turned up to take in MGM’s job fair at the Ex is any indication.
Meanwhile, the guy who started the casino circus, the mayor’s partner in crime, Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation board chair Paul Godfrey, is busier these days fending off conflict of interest charges. He continues to insist everything is on the up and up when it comes to the intense lobbying behind the scenes – even as the media play connect-the-dots to some unusual suspects in powerful corporate circles, and the unsavoury business of casino connections to organized crime forms more of the narrative.
Gotta wonder if Kathleen Wynne’s Libs, who like to refer to themselves as “the new government” at Queen’s Park, aren’t thinking it’s time to put this casino talk to rest – maybe even deciding it’s time for Godfrey to, you know, go. Last Friday (March 15), Wynne made a very public show or her distaste for some of the antics on the casino file, slapping down OLG president and CEO Rod Phillips for suggesting Toronto would be in line for a larger piece of the revenue pie in the sky than other municipalities if council approves a casino.
On that, Wynne minced no words: there will be no special deal for the big smoke. On Wednesday (March 20), Wynne met with Phillips and Godfrey to deliver that message personally. So Phillips was either lying or misinformed, and the latter seems unlikely. But at this point, casino boosters will say just about anything to get a deal past council. Wynne will have something to say about that.
The NDP seems to think the Libs are hell-bent on following through on OLG’s so-called “modernization” plan to build 23 casinos across the province. There is the government’s current financial pinch to think about.
But it’s become clear that OLG’s plan is more likely to suck the life out of most of the 27 existing regional casinos than to significantly raise gambling revenue.
Godfrey’s served a political purpose – deflecting criticism from the PCs when those stories of OLG execs pocketing big wages and making large expense claims were all the rage a few years back. But he’s become a political liability and could be an easy fall guy for today’s OLG mess. See the chaos all this casino talk has been wreaking on Wynne’s agenda to mend fences in rural Ontario. It’s Godfrey’s removal of slot machines (and their revenue) from racetracks that’s messing with Wynne’s grand plan to take the Libs back to the promised land of majority government. A few side deals for transitional racetrack funding have been signed to staunch the bleeding. The early polls have been kind to Wynne.
But with all the scurrying behind the scenes among paid self-interests on the casino file, the questions about transparency and palms being greased are getting too loud to ignore. A few too many doing the lobbying at Queen’s Park come with close connections to the former McGuinty regime Wynne’s doing her damnedest to outrun.
Shit, even PC leader Tim Hudak, who’s supposed to be a friend of the hucksters pushing a casino, is calling for a referendum. That’s not going to happen (and he knows it) after the tweak to the OLG Act made quietly last May that no longer requires municipalities to hold referendums.
But Hudak’s playing his own game to keep those aforementioned rural votes. While his latest white paper proposes shelving OLG’s “modernization,” he’s calling for outright privatization of gaming, which is actually slot machine music to the ears of gambling operators.
All the noise around a Toronto casino has served to distract attention from OLG’s efforts to get into the arguably even more lucrative online gaming biz. A request for proposals was issued in February 2012.
Online gaming is technically illegal in Canada, but exemptions can be granted under the Criminal Code. BC, Quebec and provinces on the East Coast run their own sites. An estimated $1 billion is spent on online gaming in Canada, about half of that from Ontario. Potential revenues from the international market look like salvation for casino operators losing money hand over fist. Some, among them major players vying for a Toronto casino (here’s looking at you, Caesars), are betting heavily on the recent legalization of online gambling in New Jersey (yes, home of the money-losing Atlantic City casino strip) to save their bottom line.
Let that be a lesson to T.O., where casino interests have bought themselves a little more time. The city manager’s report scheduled to go to the mayor’s executive committee Wednesday (March 20) – the report that was supposed to tell us what a financial windfall a casino would be – won’t be ready for another month. The reasons for that are unclear.
Perhaps that schism between the city manager’s office and the folks in planning who can’t see how any of the behemoths being proposed won’t kill the downtown is bigger than believed. Or maybe the mayor’s office, for reasons of optics, didn’t want the matter appearing on the same agenda as the item from Lobbyist Registrar Linda Gehrke, who’s recommending that City Hall lobbyists not be allowed to communicate with pols or their staff except during regular business hours. Madame Justice Denise Bellamy’s report on the MFP computer leasing scandal made that recommendation in 2005, but it was never incorporated into the current lobbying bylaw. The faster and furiouser arm-twisting since Sin City high rollers came to town has made the move not only necessary but timely, too.
Original Article
Source: NOW
Author: Enzo Di Matteo
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