Hon. Jean Lapointe:

Honourable senators, the bill that is before you has already been thoroughly reviewed by the upper house and two of its committees, namely the Legal and Constitutional Affairs committee and the Social Affairs committee. Most of you have heard me talk about this bill on a number of occasions, whether it was here in the Senate, in committee, or in the media.

Honourable senators, I made a commitment not only to myself, but to hundreds of people that I would continue to fight against the video lottery terminals that can be found on almost on every corner in the inner cities of eight provinces, and to do so until this bill is passed.

I should not have any trouble convincing you to return the bill to the other place, but I will nonetheless tell you about the harm that these diabolical machines do to our fellow citizens.

I will also talk about how this bill will have a positive impact on our communities. For the benefit of our newest senators, I will summarize the dangers of VLTs that eight provinces afflicted with this plague are grappling with. The purpose of the bill is to relocate VLTs, to remove them from bars and restaurants and confine them to casinos, race-courses and betting theatres. According to a study by The Fifth Estate, there are currently 38,652 VLTs in 8,309 locations across Canada.

Within three years of the bill being passed and coming into force, there will be only 206 locations in Canada where people can use VLTs, all of them under provincial jurisdiction. This will be major progress because these infernal machines will be out of reach and will attract far fewer new players.

Honourable senators, two groups of people are particularly vulnerable to the video lottery scourge: youth and seniors. Let us give them hope and remove the cause of their distress by passing this bill as quickly as possible.

By amending the Criminal Code of Canada, we will put a stop to a plague that, all too often, causes countless problems for our fellow citizens. During a presentation on VLTs, Dr. Robert Ladouceur, a Laval University psychologist and one of the most prominent researchers in the field of compulsive gambling, said that 95 per cent of the people he treats for pathological gambling play VLTs.

According to the report on gambling prepared by Harold Wynne of the Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse, 78 per cent of people with a gambling problem play VLTs. Also, according to a study published in the Canadian Journal of Psychiatry, most compulsive gamblers are addicted to VLTs, which they play daily or several times a week. They stick close to home and use the terminals available in neighbourhood bars.

In his presentation to the CIHR Institute of Neurosciences, Mental Health and Addiction, Dr. David Hodgins of the University of Calgary said that there are 3 per cent problem gamblers and 2 per cent pathological gamblers in Alberta, and that 90 per cent of people seeking treatment in Alberta are VLT players.

A study entitled "The Prevalence of Problem Gambling in Prince Edward Island" stated that for all but one of the 71 pathological gamblers admitted to the program, VLTs had caused the most problems in their lives.

These concerns have been justified by results from many research studies, such as the one in Windsor and those in Quebec by noted researchers Jeffery Derevensky and Rina Gupta of McGill University, and Harold Wynne of Wynne Resources in British Columbia. According to the work done by Gupta, Derevensky and Wynne, gambling rates among youth appear to be rising, with between 4 per cent and 18 per cent of adolescents developing a serious gambling problem. Pathological gambling has considerable social and financial impact on individuals, the family and society in general.

So many hardships, broken homes, suicides and crimes can be traced back to VLT addiction. These problems are a heavy burden for the health care system and the courts, and very costly for taxpayers.

Allow me to quote from a report by the Standing Senate Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs:

Thus, it may be said that provincial revenues from VLTs are a double edged sword; the revenues are welcome, but the social costs for individual problem gamblers and their families may reverberate for years to come. Indeed, your Committee received testimony about studies estimating that the social cost of video lotteries is three to five times higher than the revenue they bring in.

Honourable senators, by passing this bill, the Government of Canada will help those provinces that run a deficit because of their video lotteries, and not a profit, as some provincial representatives would have us believe.

As for federal-provincial relations, both entities signed agreements in 1979 and 1985 and now gaming falls mostly under provincial jurisdiction. However, in Part VII of the Criminal Code, the federal government has some room to manoeuvre in order to prevent possible future abuse.

Honourable senators, two facts convince me it is high time the federal government assumed its responsibilities and acted on this matter. The first is the fact that the monitoring agencies, which authorize the provinces to issue licences to operate video lottery terminals, report to the provinces. It is therefore hard to imagine that they will some day stop accumulating these hidden taxes, because they are blinded by the exorbitant amounts of money brought in by the video lottery terminals.

Furthermore, the federal government, which receives almost none of the gaming revenues, is in a much better position to defend the interests of people with gambling problems. Provincial authorities accumulate profits annually with their video lotteries. A number of studies by university researchers throughout Canada and reports by provincial governments, private institutions and social workers have established that the social costs of the video lotteries are three to five times higher than the revenues flowing to the provincial governments.

The second fact is that the agreements are already a number of years, if not decades, old. When they were concluded, the provincial governments managed no video lotteries. It was impossible, at that point, to foresee the unhappiness they would heap upon those less well off in our society.

So, for those who fear bars and restaurants will once again harbour illegal video lottery terminals, I point out that the legalization of video lotteries has not eliminated organized crime. Today, the criminal world is more than ever involved in money laundering and loan sharking to the considerable detriment of compulsive gamblers.

When the bill becomes law, it will be important for the provinces to set up a squad to implement it. I am sure that can be done, since, in enforcing anti-smoking legislation, the government of Quebec has 44 inspectors and 70 building safety officers who can ticket offenders. It is therefore very easy to imagine that these 114 people could also check whether the premises they visit have video lottery terminals.

Honourable senators, recent surveys have shown that the public is fed up with these bloody machines. Léger Marketing, in partnership with the Journal de Montréal, reported that more than 68 per cent of Quebecers were in favour of such a bill, while only 10 per cent opposed it.

Furthermore, in another survey, the Canada West Foundation found that more than 71 per cent of the Canadian population was in favour of legislation to restrict video lottery terminals to casinos and race-courses.

The time has come for the federal government to protect Canadians against the worst plague to afflict our society since the Spanish flu. Honourable senators, the federal government must act.

For these reasons, I ask that the bill be read a third time this very day in order for it to go to the House of Commons at committee stage, where it was before the last election was called. I therefore appeal to all honourable senators to support this bill and to immediately pass it at third reading, if only to relieve human misery.

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