What’s next Virginia? Santa Clause really does exist?
Wake up, people, wake up!
Our government...your government...the people’s government, care about gambling addiction as much as the SAQ cares about how much you drink. (Another government-run department)
Our kids don’t have the right books in school. Our kids don’t have enough books in school. School room ceilings have paint falling on the floor. There are potholes in Montreal the size of Rhode Island. There are pieces of bridges that fall more often than leaves in September.
Come on people...wake up...
We are a province of 6 million people with only 1.3 million of us working and paying taxes; the same province that does just over 4 billion at the Loto Quebec level.
Where is the money, people? Where is the money?
And we, as a society, keep on going to one of Quebec’s 4 casinos? We keep buying Loto tickets week after week after week.
We play Mise-O-Jeux with the hopes of winning a whopping 32 dollars.
Wake up, people, wake up...
I have dreams (perhaps nightmares) that the billions of dollars being taken in by our government must be in a massive war chest tucked away somewhere in Quebec City.
Truth be told, chances are, I bet it’s being wasted on bureaucratic nonsense.
I have travelled the world, and there is no greater place to live and raise a family than right here in Montreal. However, if our politicians weren’t as useless and crooked as they are, Montreal could be the best city on planet earth, and Quebec could be the greatest province.
Hundreds of thousands of dollars a year on a department they call L’Office Québécois de la Langue Française is acceptable, but a 4 billion dollar lottery intake can’t open beds in hospitals or man the operating rooms without having patients wait months and months.
If somebody, if anybody, could tell us where every dollar goes from Loto-Québec, and explained to Mr. And Mrs. Taxpayer what the real story is, I would love to listen.
Here is my idea to gamble for free: Drive along The Boulevard and try not to hit a pothole. Drive under bridges for hours at a time and hope that nothing falls on your car. Take yourself to the Emergency Room at any of the Montreal area hospitals and see if you can get in and out under a couple of hours.
C-difficile really stands for ‘Casino-Difficile’. And we, as an educated city and province, day after day, give them more business? After-taxed dollars? Nacht
Look, we have to buy gasoline. We know we’re getting screwed. We know there’s collusion between oil companies. But we have no choice. We know how much money per gallon (litres to you young folk) is taxes. But to spend after-tax dollars at the casino is utterly and completely ridiculous.
Let’s use Loto-Québec (casinos, 6-49 etc.) for the real purpose for which it exists: simple fun. A few dollars here and there, to the average Canadian who can afford it, is fine.
Compulsive gambling isn’t. Addictive gambling isn’t. Pathological gambling isn’t.
We need programs to help these people.
We need money to help these people.
We need people to help these people.
The lottery business in Quebec, or anywhere in the world, for that matter, should be privately run, and pay its share of taxes based on profit, with the understanding that ‘X’ percent of revenues goes toward helping the addicts of their industry.
We have heard for years and years how much smoking has cost the province in lost productivity and what it has cost our healthcare system. Do we ever hear that about Loto-Québec or the SAQ?
If the government has the right to meddle into the tobacco industry, then why doesn’t private industry have the right to meddle into the gambling industry?
(Pretty good point, huh?)
Certainly, with a 4 billion dollar intake, there must be money, more money, available to help those that can’t help themselves. The SPCA does it...
