Bulletin No. 14, October 1, 2024
We are pleased to provide this update on our campaign to secure legislation that will prohibit advertisements for gambling, just as legislation now prohibits ads for tobacco and cannabis. We conclude this update with suggested actions you could take to help push this matter along.
Further information on these items can be found in our website: BanAdsForGambling.ca
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In this Bulletin:
In this issue:
1. Bill S-269 goes to clause-by-clause consideration
2. UK report on Social and Economic Impacts of the Gambling Industry
3. Federal and provincial gaming revenue
4. Young men disproportionally drawn into harmful gambling
5. Prohibit sports betting altogether?
6. Subscribe to the Bulletin
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1. Bill S-269 goes to clause-by-clause consideration
Bill S-269, ‘The National Framework on Advertising for Sports Betting Act’, is moving to the next stage of consideration in the Senate Committee on Transportation and Communication. Deputations on the bill were completed on October 1, and the Committee has now moved into clause-by-clause consideration.
The bill would require the federal government to develop a framework to regulate and restrict the use of advertising for single-event sports betting. It would also set national standards for the prevention and diagnosis of problem gambling; see Public Bill (Senate) S-269 (44-1) - First Reading - National Framework on Advertising for Sports Betting Act - Parliament of Canada
The proceedings can be followed here: S-269 (44-1) - LEGISinfo - Parliament of Canada
There has been wall-to-wall unanimity in support of the bill from the public health officials, legal and public health scholars, sports leaders and citizens presenting to the Committee. They’ve argued that Parliament’s rush to legalization of sports betting was a mistake and needs significant correctives/guard rails in the interests of public health. One invited witness, the British Lord Michael Grade, a former chair of the BBC and currently the chair of the British media regulator Ofcom, said that compared to other nations, Canada was ‘on the lower slopes of a very steep mountain’ that had to be climbed to reduce harm from sports betting and other forms of gambling.
Bruce Kidd testified on behalf of the Campaign to Ban Ads for Gambling in June. He called on the Government of Canada to ban all ads for gambling in the same way and for the same health reasons that Canada already bans ads for tobacco and cannabis. He also called for a public health approach to the problems of sports betting, rather than the ‘blame the victim’, ‘responsible gambling’ approach currently taken by provinces, territories and the gambling industry.
We do not have a date yet for the final vote on the Bill.
2. UK report on Social and Economic Impacts of the Gambling Industry
Lord Grade was chair of the British House of Lords Select Committee on the Social and Economic Impact of the Gambling Industry. The report is at: https://committees.parliament.uk/committee/406/gambling-industry-committee/news/115443/time-to-act-to-reduce-gamblingrelated-harm-says-lords-report/
Lord Grade was called as a witness by the Senate Committee and said:
“Our findings were shocking. Among them was that, on average, one person a day, usually a young man, committed suicide because of gambling harm. Exposure to advertising, usually when young, has to be a contributing factor. We took formal evidence from the families of some of these young men and informally met others. These meetings were very informative and very distressing….
“When I say that gambling advertising is one of the greatest contributors to gambling harm, I state that as a fact. Yet the industry still argues that there is no proven link between gambling advertising and gambling harm. Inevitably, the proof is not rigorous; you cannot show that harm suffered at the age of 20 is caused by exposure to advertising 10 years earlier. But there is one incontrovertible fact: The gambling industry in the United Kingdom spends UK£1.5 billion on advertising, much of it around sport. It would hardly do so unless it thought that this was an effective way of inducing people to start and continue to gamble….
“More pernicious are the approaches targeted at individual recipients, and this is enabled by their smartphones. Here, the algorithms of the gambling companies can and do choose as their targets the most vulnerable: those who already gamble more than they can afford and who often have tried to combat their addiction, perhaps by self-exclusion, but who are all too easy to tempt back through direct advertising. These are the ones from whom the industry makes the majority of its profits “
Lord Grade also made several recommendations for the (provincial) regulators: (a) Ban credit cards for betting, so that bettors could not run into credit card debt, and force them to use only debit cards; (b) Test gambling sites for their addictiveness and ban sites that lead to high rates of addiction; (c) Insist upon age verification technologies for bettors, to minimize under-age bettors.
3. Federal and provincial gaming revenue
A recent report by Deloitte estimated that betting operators provided $790 milllion to the Ontario government and $75 million to municipal governments in Ontario, as well as $380 million to the federal government in 2023-2024.’See iGaming Ontario: Economic Contribution of Ontario’s Regulated iGaming Market – Year 2
What’s missing from this information is the relevant tax rates. At present, Ontario taxes gambling activity at the rate of 20% while US jurisdictions generally assess a much higher rate; Illinois taxes at 40% while New York at 51%. The tables also do not show the amount of money that’s allocated to research, treatment of gambling harms, and education. In 2019, the Ontario virtually eliminated all financial support for gambling-related research.
The Senate commissioned a somewhat different study on net provincial income from gambling, including from very lucrative lotteries, for the fiscal year 2022-23. Income to the BC government: $1.6 billion; to Alberta, $363 million; to Ontario, $2.5 billion; to Quebec, $1.6 billion; to Nova Scotia, $160 million.
This brief report can be found in our Resources section.
4. Young men disproportionally drawn into harmful gambling
A recent report by researchers at Fairleigh Dickinson University in the US has confirmed what a broad swath of parents, mental health treatment centres and educators have openly feared, namely that problem gambling affects young men disproportionately.
The study showed that 10% percent of young men showed behavior that indicates a gambling problem, compared to 3% of the general population; see Poll shows young men in the US are more at risk for gambling addiction than the general population | AP News
5. Prohibit sports betting altogether?
An article in The Atlantic argues that sports betting should be completely prohibited:
“The more elegant solution is the blunter one: ban sports gambling once again. Unlike regulation—which is complex, hard to get right, and challenged by near-certain industry capture of regulatory bodies—prohibition cuts the problem off at the root. No legal sports gambling, no sports-gambling industry.”
See https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/09/legal-sports-gambling-was-mistake/679925/
6. Subscribe to the Bulletin
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