A rchive Date
[ 20-08-2000 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Canada ]
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[Gambling, bikers, and economic theory
By GLENN WANAMAKER-- CNEWS Politics
Former Montreal Mayor Jean Drapeau, the dreamer who successfully brought Expo '67 and the Summer Olympic Games to his city, knew what he was doing when he introduced the first "voluntary tax" more than 30 years ago.
At the time, lotteries were illegal in Canada, but Drapeau got around it by calling it a voluntary tax and it was a hit. Soon the feds saw the wisdom of his ways and changed the law.
In 1996, gambling in its various forms took in $17 billion in Canada. Last year in Quebec, Loto-Quebec pumped $1.6 billion directly into government coffers, more than enough to finance this year's $1 billion tax cut.
No industry has grown more than gambling. In his latest report, Quebec Auditor-General Guy Breton said the betting industry grew by an astonishing 6,500 per cent from 1974 to 1996 and that it now accounts for 3 per cent of government revenues.
There are more cheesy lottery games than you can shake a stick at, 17,000 video lottery terminals, 170 places to play satellite bingo, and as of this week, two new craps tables at the Montreal Casino. "This is going to bring a lot of excitement to the floor," said one casino official.
Guy Breton however wasn't quite so tickled. His ledger book also shows that the number of pathological players has almost doubled, and that about 2.7 per cent of the adult population can be considered pathological gamblers.
That brings with it social costs, he said. In Australia, where betting revenues are less than in Canada (at about $11 billion in 1998), research suggests social costs reach a minimum $1.8 billion a year.
But it's hard to evaluate, he said. In Quebec, no government studies have been undertaken, and neither Loto-Quebec nor the gambling regulatory agency has offered the slightest bit of advice, especially about the impacts on the young.
Embarrassed by the success of its money-making machine, the government has now committed $44 million over six years to support research and support programs for problem gambling.
And next month, MNAs will debate government and Loto-Quebec avarice during parliamentary hearings. 10-1 odds avarice wins.
POLLING GAMES
If you read about the results of the SOM poll in the Quebec City French daily Le Soleil last weekend, you would have learned that Quebecers' knowledge of Stockwell Day's existence had hit a surprisingly high 49 per cent of those polled.
If you read about the results of the same poll in Montreal's English daily The Gazette, you would have learned that "half of Quebecers still don't know" the identity of the Canadian Alliance leader.
While the Gazette's anglo editors were likely trying to play it safe and skeptical ("Day's yet to break here"), Le Soleil was expressing a cultural shock that this "unknown personality just a few weeks ago" had registered with so many Quebecers. It must have been the French lessons.
Still, when you read the results, you see that people were only being asked to identify the new party leader. Voting intentions are quite another story.
Furthermore, while pollsters called 1,107 people, 15 per cent weren't home and 30 per cent wouldn't answer. And when pollsters asked which political leader is the most modern in "his" way of doing things, voters were given a choice of five people -- Paul Martin was included but not NDP leader Alexa McDonough.
SINGING FOR THEIR SUPPER
Oh, what a scandalously tangled web.
Guess who went to the wedding of a friend of a man who is even better known than Stockwell Day and infinitely more powerful? Singer and actress Ginette Reno. And singer Jean-Pierre Ferland too. Ginette is Quebec's equivalent of Juliette, Anne Murray and Rita MacNeil all rolled into one. She is admired, her music is loved, her persona is respected by all. Jean-Pierre Ferland too has many fans.
So what in the world were they doing at a Hell's Angels wedding for a pal of Maurice "Mom" Boucher, the so far untouchable kingpin of a criminal biker conglomerate.
The news leaked out thanks to the tabloid "Allo Police" and the media chatter grew louder and louder all week, until the two stars had to explain themselves.
It seems that neither got paid and neither knew much beforehand where they were going. They went because friends asked them. No doubt, the heavy police presence outside the church was a first clue.
At any rate, Ginette expressed her regrets, emphasizing that "in my mind, there is no link between my presence and the activities involved in by certain members of this group".
On the positive side, said Ferland, maybe he was able "to bring just a little bit of humanity" into a violent milieu.
POLITICAL SCIENTISTS WORRY
The president of the International Political Science Association (IPSA), Cornell University political scientist Theodore Lowi, had this warning recently to political leaders when he addressed the IPSA conference in Quebec City.
(Feel free to insert the names of Alliance leader Stockwell Day, Quebec Finance Minister Bernard Landry, federal Finance Minister Paul Martin, or the provincial leader of your choice.)
"Over the past two decades," Lowi observed, "political science has been losing the struggle for the definition of goals, indeed losing to an economic theory of democracy in which free enterprise alone is sufficient to accomplish all other goals.
"This economic theory of democracy is not economic science. It is ideology, and not good ideology because the free market does NOT [his emphasis] make free all those who enter, nor does it emerge or prosper without the substantial support of the state.
"Yet for the past two decades, there has been a strong and dangerous tendency to denigrate the state -- and therefore the political -- denouncing both as the primary source of irrationality in the world.
"Economics made a gigantic leap of faith to incorporate not only economic thought but social and political thought. This is precisely why economic theory has to be confronted as ideology."
Globalization, of course, is the key word on the lips of many Canadian politicians. It's political shorthand for corporate competitiveness, free trade, and the rationale for smaller government and spending cuts.
"The specific goal [of the globalization discourse]," Lowi warned, "is to deprive the state of the constitutional authority to adopt any restraints against free trade."
Its secondary goal is "to eliminate the social obligations and entitlements that were established and expanded during the post-war social democratic years".
This, repeats Lowi, is ideology, not science. And what political scientists must do is put the science back into politics and demonstrate why the institutions of government are critical to democracies.
Or to put it bluntly -- "to salvage more democracy from the tyrant -- whether that tyrant be repressive rule by malevolent political elites or repressive rule by benevolent market mechanisms".
You may have thought you heard some of this before from protesters in Vancouver, Seattle, and Windsor during various international trade talks.
Who would have thought political scientists would be mounting a counter-offensive of their own?
The definition of government, Lowi said, has been "stigmatized" much like socialism was during the Cold War. And the success of this campaign "can be seen in the rightward movement of virtually all political parties in globalizing countries".
But the catch is, he argued, corporate interests require strong government, because only strong government can provide the local, national, and global rules, social order, and work environment to keep corporations working smoothly.
"Eventually state capacity will have to be restored", he said, because current economic ideology cannot handle conflicts caused by such things as disease pandemics, vast wage differences, trans-border pollution, and illegal immigration.
How big should government be and how much should it intervene? Political science doesn't have the answers, Lowi said, but it has the questions.
"It's the time and place for political science to bring politics and political economy back to the table. Economic ideology is hegemonic only by default."
 World Fact Book (CIA)]]
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