Toronto Casino a Bad Idea

With there being talk of adding a full blown casino to the slot machines that Woodbine Racetrack already offers, many residents are concerned as to what that will mean for Toronto. Toronto is facing many financial problems, but many feel that slot machines are enough gambling for their area, and that if they want to add a casino it should happen somewhere else.

Mayor David Miller has been against expanding gambling in their town to anything more than the slot machines that already exist, yet when asked about it lately he said he might consider it. He said that the addition of a full casino might be useful in terms of the budget, but that he would only be willing to add onto the slot machines if they got 100% of the extra revenue that would be coming in.

As it stands now, the provincial government takes the lion’s share of the slot machine revenue that comes out of Woodbine, so the addition of table games and whatnot would seemingly go to them as well. Toronto residents have already said that they do not want to expand the slot machine gambling to include a full blown casino, and officials would be smart to keep that in mind when looking at doing so.

Many think that there are other things they could be doing to bring in additional revenue, like reversing the provincial costs that have just been downloaded onto municipalities. Woodbine already has more than 1,700 slot machines, and Toronto gets only 5% of 1/4th of those slot machines, and 2% from the remainder. It seems that if the province wants to make more money, they are going to have to look elsewhere.



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