Cartels and Casinos: First Nations’ Gaming in Canada

Flanagan, Tom

Cartels and Casinos: First Nations’ Gaming in Canada

dc.contributor.author	Flanagan, Tom
dc.date.accessioned	2020-11-12T18:36:33Z
dc.date.available	2020-11-12T18:36:33Z
dc.date.issued	2020-09
dc.description.abstract	In 1985, Parliament amended the Criminal Code to give the provinces jurisdiction over gambling. The provinces have used their new jurisdiction to create cartels for their own profit, in which they are either the owners of licensed casinos or take a large share of the profit. First Nations challenged the provinces in court but lost. Hence, they have had to fit into the cartel system and take leftovers—with a few exceptions, casinos located far from the main action. Only Alberta has let them into lucrative metropolitan markets, with one casino each in Edmonton and Calgary. Saskatchewan and Manitoba have recently licensed First Nation casinos not too far from Saskatoon and Winnipeg. In Ontario, Casino Rama is in a popular resort location, and the Membertou VLT parlours are situated within the small city of Sydney, Nova Scotia.Obviously a lot of money moves around in casinos, but does it benefit the host First Nations? The answer is an emphatic “Yes” for the half-dozen casinos located in or near cities and destination resorts. In all these cases, the opening of a casino was an inflection point in the time series of their Community Well-Being (CWB) index scores. (CWB is an aggregate of income, employment, education, and housing data collected by Statistics Canada.) Their scores rose more rapidly than their previous rate of progress because large profits from the casino can be used to provide better housing and other social services for First Nation members. Money from the casinos can also be leveraged for large-scale business and real-estate development, as is now happening in Edmonton and Calgary.Elsewhere, the answer is only a qualified “Yes”. The casinos in rural locations are generally profitable and honestly run, and they do generate useful amounts of cash and jobs for the host First Nations. However, in most cases hosting a casino has no discernible effect on the Community Well-Being of the hosts. The CWB scores of less favourably located First Nation casinos have not risen more rapidly than the general rate of improvement for First Nations because the revenues generated from their remote locations are not large enough to have a transformative effect.	en_US
dc.identifier.doi	http://dx.doi.org/10.11575/PRISM/38367
dc.identifier.isbn	978-0-88975-613-7
dc.identifier.uri	http://hdl.handle.net/1880/112732
dc.language.iso	eng	en_US
dc.publisher	Fraser Institute	en_US
dc.publisher.hasversion	publishedVersion	en_US
dc.publisher.institution	Fraser Institute	en_US
dc.rights	Permission to include in the Alberta Gambling Research Institute research repository granted by Kristin McCahon, Senior Editor, Publications and Marketing, The Fraser Institute on November 12, 2020.	en_US
dc.subject	Native peoples -- Gambling -- Canada	en_US
dc.subject	Gambling -- Government policy -- Canada	en_US
dc.subject	Gambling on First Nations reserves -- Economic aspects -- Canada	en_US
dc.subject.other	Gambling Literature	en_US
dc.title	Cartels and Casinos: First Nations’ Gaming in Canada	en_US
dc.type	technical report	en_US
dc.type	report	en_US
ucalgary.item.requestcopy	true	en_US