Everyone know someone who's negatively impacted by gambling

Poll: 50 per cent of Torontonians don’t want a casino in city

Half of Torontonians don’t want a casino in the city, a new poll suggests

Fifty per cent of respondents oppose construction of a new casino, while 35 per cent are in favour, according to Forum Research, a Canadian survey firm. Fifteen per cent said they had no opinion on the issue.

“Even though the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation may want to build a casino in the Toronto area, there’s going to be some opposition to that,” said Lorne Bozinoff, the firm’s president.

Still, he added, “People are fairly split about this thing.”

The survey also revealed that Torontonians would prefer to see a casino built at the Exhibition Place in downtown Toronto, or at Woodbine Racetrack in the city’s west end.

The Exhibition Place site is acceptable because it’s “a separate entertainment section of the city and it’s a little bit away from the residential areas,” while Woodbine already has existing gambling facilities for horse betting and slots, Bozinoff said.

Opposition to building a casino is highest in East York and North York with 55 per cent each (compared to 44 per cent in Etobicoke and 43 per cent in Scarborough). Women and residents aged 65 and over are also more likely to disapprove, with 55 per cent and 59 per cent opposed, respectively.

The results are not surprising, said Robert Williams, a research coordinator at the Alberta Gambling Research Institute.

Over the past two decades, Canadians’ perception of gambling has “become considerably more negative in all regions of the country,’ he said.

“Before we had all these casinos and before gambling was omnipresent, people were fairly naive about the potential negative repercussions of gambling. But now, everyone knows someone either in their immediate family or knows a friend or a colleague who’s been seriously negatively impacted.”

Over 60 per cent of Ontarians gamble and 3.4 per cent of the province’s adult population are problem gamblers, according to a 2005 study by the Toronto-based Responsible Gambling Council.

Rumours that OLG officials are pushing to build a Toronto-based casino have reignited debate over the need for a local gambling operation. The corporation generates $7 billion a year in business, with returns to the province ranging from $1.7 to $2 billion, said spokesperson Tony Bitonti.

Bitonti would not comment on the poll results or the possibility of a new casino in Toronto, but said the OLG will release a strategic business review of its gaming operations that will “come out soon.”

“We’re looking at the entire gaming picture — not in one specific area, but across the entire province,” he said.

Forum Research polled 1,560 randomly selected residents, aged 18 and over, through an “interactive voice response telephone survey” from Jan. 30 to 31. The margin of error of the survey is plus or minus 2.4 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.