Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson can protest all he wants that he’s opposed to expanded gambling, but his Vision council, in approving the casino space they have allotted for the Paragon Gaming casino on the B.C. Stadium site, has made expanded gambling all but a sure thing.
That was certainly a consistent concern coming from a number of the speakers who addressed the city’s development permit board Monday night.
The city did pull a surprise move to blunt its critics’ attack, which I will get to in a moment.
But first let me tell you the permit board was considering the most recent rendition of Paragon’s application for what is being called an “urban entertainment resort.”
None was more pointed on the matter than Ian Pitfield, the former B.C. Supreme Court judge and member of the anti-gambling lobby group Vancouver Not Vegas! The doubling of casino floor space, he said, was a “cleverly contrived and disguised mechanism” that will ultimately lead to more slots down the road.
Sandy Garossino, speaking for the same group, said: “The application itself makes it crystal clear that there will be more slots coming in.”
She figures either the province will intervene by changing the Gaming Control Act or Paragon will just wait until they have a more compliant council.
Bear in mind that the primary role of the development permit board is to deal with matters of design of the proposed development and whether it complies with the zoning requirement.
Yet virtually every speaker was critical of the project, not because of the design — although Hillary Reid said the building was “butt ugly” — but because of the impact of gambling addiction.
Rod MacDonald, once the long-time Vancouver firefighters’ union president, had this to say: “I didn’t come here to find out whether the developers have the ability to grow cucumbers for the salad bar. I’m here to talk about addiction. I am a gambling addict.”
He once had everything, he told a hushed audience. Now, “the heritage home gone, the BMW gone and all the fixings.” He’s 15 months into recovery and says: “The carnage my addiction has left behind is immeasurable.”
Finally, he added, this casino “is not something we need.”
Although, you have to wonder whether governments are just as addicted to gambling as those individual addicts.
The city is a small player in this game but socks away $6 million a year from the Edgewater Casino, which is owned by Paragon and is about to be converted to the casino in the new urban entertainment centre.
It came as a surprise to no one that the board approved the application. No application has ever been rejected and sent back to council, as some suggested it should be, as long as it met the zoning requirements. And, so far, this has.
What was unexpected and set the opposition back on its heels was a motion introduced by the city’s head of planning, Brian Jackson. It significantly amends the social policy requirements placed on the developer by city council.
It is related to chief provincial health officer Dr. Perry Kendall’s recent troubling report on problem gamblers called “Lower the Stakes: A Public Health Approach to Gambling in British Columbia.”
Paragon is required to work with city staff and the chief medical health officer of Vancouver Coastal Health and submit a formal response to concerns raised by Kendall.
That would include dealing with the number of ATMs that should be permitted, hours of operation, hours of liquor service, signs indicating the dangers of gambling, creating a harm reduction strategy and a review of existing risk mitigation activities at the Edgewater Casino.
And in case you were wondering where Jackson is getting his marching orders from; all of this has to be to the satisfaction of the general manager of community services and, most importantly, the city manager Penny Ballem.
If you doubt this came as a surprise, as the meeting broke up I saw Paragon’s lawyer George Cadman pushing through the crowd to ask Jackson for a copy of the amendment.
If you doubt the move was politically effective, know that Garossino confessed the following day she was “happy.” She wants the casino’s hours cut back from round the clock in some cases to the same as bars now have.
