CULTURE-CANADA: Chinese New Year Brings Gambling Controversy

By Marty Logan Reprint | | Print |

Marty Logan

MONTREAL, Feb 9 2002 (IPS) - Ethnic Chinese here say authorities should have been sensitive to the well-known gambling problems among their people and alerted them to a proposed mini-casino in the city’s Chinatown section, and to plans to print new lottery tickets featuring the lunar Year of the Horse, which begins Feb. 12.

The mini-casino, to include off-track horse betting and video lottery terminals, was defeated in January after a last-minute outcry from a coalition of groups but the “scratch-and-win” tickets commemorating the year of the horse that begins Feb. 12 remain on sale.

“I think it’s also a matter of willful blindness – the government is just making far too much money from running gambling operations to give it up. Their attitude is ‘let us continue to make our big bucks and we’ll give you a little bit of money to help solve social problems’,” says May Chiu, executive director of Chinese Family Services of Greater Montreal.

Chiu’s group led the protests that forced a local Chinese businessman to withdraw his application for a liquor license for the casino in the tiny Chinatown in the heart of Montreal.

Chiu says Quebec’s gambling regulator should have done a better job of notifying them of the application. “They did not consult with us. They did not notify anyone in Chinatown. Even their public notice itself was so misleading.”

A spokesman for the Regie des Alcools, des Courses et des Jeux, an office of the Ministry of Public Security, says it followed procedure.

“The Regie received the application, published a public notice (and) then it waited to see if there were opponents to the plan. It recognised Chinese Family Services as an interested party, held one day of hearings and afterward the applicants withdrew their request,” says Artur J. Pires.

But Pires says the Regie is now studying whether the long-standing system of notification can be improved. “It may be necessary to publish the notice not only in Le Devoir (a French-language newspaper) but in a newspaper of the Chinese community, or the Portuguese community if that’s the case.”

The 1996 census counted 55,000 Chinese speakers in Quebec province, most of those living in greater Montreal, a mainly French-speaking city of about three million people.

Although widely perceived to be plagued by gambling problems, Canada’s ethnic Chinese gamble at about the same rate as the overall population. Studies have shown that 70 percent of Canadians play games of chance, about half of them buying lottery tickets.

According to a Toronto-based expert, the percentage of problem gamblers among Chinese is also close to the Canadian average.

“I don’t think gambling is inherent among Chinese. There are quite a lot of problem gamblers in all races,” says Patrick Au, executive director of Chinese Family Services of Ontario province. “When you go into a casino you see quite a lot of yellow faces but some are Korean, some are Vietnamese, some are Chinese.”

Au says that while increasing numbers of “pathological” gamblers are recognising their problems and seeking help, they also have more opportunities to quench their thirst for playing the odds.

Loto-Quebec’s Year of the Horse tickets is one such opportunity. “Some of the problem gamblers, if they hadn’t seen the Chinese (characters) on the ticket they wouldn’t buy it. It goes back to the opportunity,” Au says.

Loto-Quebec, however, claims that sales of two million tickets in each of 2000 and 2001 proves that Chinese New Year tickets appeal to all Quebeckers, not just ethnic Chinese.

Lotteries account for about 500 million dollars of Quebec’s revenues while all forms of legal gambling netted the province about 1.3 billion dollars in 1995, three percent of all revenues.

Countrywide, an estimated 50 permanent casinos, 21,000 slot machines, 38,000 video lottery terminals, 20,000 annual bingo events, and 44 permanent horse race tracks earned governments nearly 4.6 billion dollars.

Chiu says her group stresses that Chinese are not more likely to be problem gamblers but that their own studies found that the gambling addiction rate among Chinatown’s restaurant workers was 19 percent higher than the average.

She speculates this is because many of the workers are newcomers to Canada who are often isolated from wider society. Others may have low self-esteem because of the low status of restaurant work, adds Chiu.

A local business group fought the casino fearing it would attract crime to Chinatown. “What provision has (the minister of public security) made to the Chinese community – if such a permit is granted – to ensure other forms of criminality would not destroy the tranquility of our neighbourhood?” says Kenneth Cheung of the Montreal Chinese Business and Professional People’s Association.

Montreal’s elected representative for Chinatown says he will try to introduce a resolution that would permit the area to be declared a No Gambling zone. “The weakness among certain members of the community toward gambling are well known,” says Robert Laramee. “Plus, the people in the neighbourhood don’t want a casino.”

Laramee estimates the project will be ready for debate in about six months.