Vigilance on the OLG partnership.

December 6, 2024

David Shoemaker
CEO and Secretary General
Canadian Olympic Committee

Dear David:

Thank you for your letter of November 12, 2024, and the clarification of the partnership between the Canadian Olympic Committee and the Canadian Paralympic Committee (COC/CPC) with the Ontario Lottery Corporation (OLG), specifically the OLG's Quest for Gold Program.

We would be the first to acknowledge that the Olympic Movement in Canada and lotteries are inexorably connected. In the early 1970s, we both urged our friends to buy tickets when the federal government legalized lotteries to help fund the 1976 Olympic Games in Montreal. But since that time, and especially since the federal government transferred the responsibility for lotteries to the provinces and territories in 1979, the field has grown and changed dramatically.

You note that lotteries have brought significant financial benefits to arts and sports organizations across the country. Yet we wonder if it's time for a serious review of the role of lotteries and related forms of gambling. In particular, we worry about whether the growth in lotteries has paved the way for more harmful forms of gambling and betting, and exacerbates the increasingly well documented harms to mental health, families and communities, and their rising costs.

We fully agree that sports at all levels should be adequately funded, as you and Karen O'Neill of the CPC argued in a welcome editorial in the Toronto Star this week. We have long argued this ourselves. But is reliance upon lotteries, gaming and sports betting the way to go? We reject your suggestion that ‘the federal government (should) direct revenues from single-event sports betting directly back into the sport system.’ That would be benefitting from the harm. The first call upon those revenues should be preventive education, treatment and research to address the harms from gambling.

Like the 1979 transfer of lotteries to the provinces and territories, the Safe and Regulated Betting Act of 2021 that legalized single sport betting in Canada gave regulatory responsibilities to the provinces and territories. Since that time, in large part because of the onslaught of advertising for gambling on sport events, betting and gaming are now normalized activities for Canadians.

Sports betting and gaming are now seamless with lotteries. By way of example in Ontario, there are now 83 gaming websites, of which 31 offer sport betting. The OLG is one of those sites, and the OLG offers on-line sport betting through their Pro-Line and Point-Spread products.

While we understand that the COC/CPC's partnership is confined to the OLG's lottery products, we urge the Boards and senior staff of the COC and the CPC to exercise extreme vigilance on that partnership. This is of particular importance given the values of the Olympic and Paralympic Movements, which aspire to develop ‘in a balanced whole the qualities of body, will and mind’, not to addict people to empty dreams of riches and disembodied betting. Given the OLG's role in conducting and managing lotteries together with gaming and sports betting, we fear that COC/CPC sponsorship creates the impression that there is no distinction between the Olympic and Paralympic Movements, the gaming and betting industries, and the capitalist sports organizations (NHL, MLB, NBA, etc.) with which betting is now formally aligned.

We strongly urge the COC to make it very clear in its public and internal communications that it does not condone sports betting, that it strictly enforces the prohibitions against match manipulation and that it provides counselling and support to those who have become ensnared by sports betting or have been abused by disappointed bettors. We are deeply concerned about the growing number of young male sportspersons who have become addicted to sports betting and have had to drop out of school and sports, and the number of prominent athletes who have been publicly attacked for not realizing bettors' prop bets.

As we did in our letter of November 1, 2024, we also urge the COC and CPC to update their Codes of Ethics to include, as a policy, that they will not accept sponsorships from the following industries:

• Tobacco
• Vaping
• Alcohol
• Cannabis
• Gaming and sports betting
• Pharmaceutical
• Firearms

Thank you for your consideration of this very important issue.

With best wishes,

Joel Finlay
Bruce Kidd
Campaign to Ban Ads for Gambling

Copy to: Karen O'Neill