Preville on Politics
Cesar’s Palacio
Posted on July 16, 2007 by Philip Preville
[UPDATED] What other name could the city possibly give to the casino proposed by the councillor for Ward 17 – Davenport, if they choose to adopt it? Palacio’s proposal to study a casino is just one item on a busy agenda full of high-profile items, including off-leash areas for dogs, official plan amendments for the West Queen West Triangle, a new lawsuit against the city from Porter Airlines (how about that?) and of course the city’s proposed new land-transfer and vehicle-registration taxes. Palacio proposes the casino as a means of avoiding the new taxes. But there’s an odd similarity between the two proposals.
Preville Tax Theory 101: These days, broad-based new taxation measures — increased income tax or property tax, for example — are almost impossible to implement. For any government to pull it off, they pretty much have to scare people into it, such as when Premier Dalton McGuinty implemented the health-care premium on the grounds that the medical system would implode without it. The alternative to the manufactured-crisis strategy is to implement taxes for specific transactions, charged only to a small segment of the population that is willing to pay them — or, at the very least, is willing to turn a blind eye to them. (Sometimes you even have to manufacture a crisis just to implement a transaction-based tax, but that’s a post for tomorrow.)
In essence, both the proposed land-transfer tax and the casino are transaction-model taxes. In the case of the former: if you have decided to buy a home in this city, it means you are already committed to spending in excess of $350,000, which is probably money you don’t have anyway, and an additional 1% tax charge, while irritating, is something you’ll pay to get your dream home. In the case of the latter: once you’ve decided to spend a night at the tables, the thrill of gambling is so enveloping that you don’t really care who gets your money. (Besides, going in to the experience, you’re convinced you’ll be a winner.)
The difference, as has been proven time and again, is that casinos ruin lives and families. Governments that own casinos end up filling their coffers at the expense of numerous personal bankruptcies. There is also the issue of lost lives: as provincial coroners in Ontario, Quebec and elsewhere have warned, people kill themselves once they’ve gambled away their life savings. The land-transfer tax, for all its trumped-up ills, won’t have nearly the same detrimental effect.
Palacio’s motion is merely to study the possibility of a casino, and it may well pass no matter what happens to Miller’s tax proposals — but I hope it doesn’t. Gambling revenues are as addictive as gambling itself, and once the city takes its first baby steps down that path, there will be no going back.
Philip Preville
Veteran freelance writer Philip Preville lived much of his life in Montreal and Edmonton before he was lured, like so many Torontonians before him, by the promise of more work and a better living. A National Magazine Award winner and former Canadian Journalism Fellow at the University of Toronto’s Massey College, Preville writes Toronto Life’s politics column. He lives with his wife and one-year-old son in Riverdale, just close enough to the Don Valley Parkway that he can hear it when he steps outside his house—but just far enough away that it doesn’t keep him awake at night. On his office wall hangs a 1938–39 press pass belonging to his grandfather, Elias Gannon, who wrote for the Montreal Star.
Latest blog entries:
- I have a new home
- Montreal to adopt vacuum waste collection
- Why U.S.-based magazines hit newsstands so late
- I salivate at the prospect of a Miller-Smitherman-Ford cage match
Topics:
Postings by date:
- May, 2008
- April, 2008
- March, 2008
- February, 2008
- January, 2008
- December, 2007
- November, 2007
- October, 2007
- September, 2007
- August, 2007
- July, 2007
- June, 2007
- May, 2007
- April, 2007
- March, 2007
Comments
Neither the author nor Toronto Life necessarily agree with the comments posted below. Editors will not correct spelling or grammar. Toronto Life reserves the right to edit or delete comments entirely. Read our full policy
Mark Dowling July 17, 2007 at 8:52 a.m.
a lesson for Councillor Vaughan - when you openly tell the media your pedestrianisation proposals are specifically aimed at hindering a specific business, lawyers will start drafting language like:
"The court applications allege that the actions taken by Community Council were done in bad faith in furtherance of certain City Councillors’ objectives to shut down or interfere with the operations of the TCCA. The applicants also rely upon the Tri-partite Agreement governing the TCCA which includes a provision that the parties to the agreement (which includes the City) are not to interfere with the safe use and operation of the TCCA."
Philip Preville July 17, 2007 at 11:13 a.m.
I have always applauded Adam Vaughan for his open rebellion against the airport, and I still do. No tough talk without tough action from Mr. Vaughan, unlike his predecessor. You're right that, by failing to cloak his initiatives in less inflammatory language, he has basically committed the city to a court battle. But that may have been his intention from the start.