Gambling Help Line and VLT Revenue
Mr. Kevin Lamoureux (Inkster): Madam Speaker, under Rule 27.(1), I would like to move a motion requesting debate on a matter of urgent public importance.
Madam Speaker, I would move, seconded by the member for St. Boniface (Mr. Gaudry), that under Rule 27 the ordinary business of the House be set aside to discuss a matter of urgent public importance, namely the immediate release of the report which offers a statistical profile of the callers to the provincial problem gambling help line and also information which gives the financial breakdown of VLT revenue on a community-by-community basis so that presenters at Monday's gambling hearings are informed of all of the relevant and useful facts when making presentations.
Madam Speaker: Order, please. Before recognizing the honourable member for Inkster, I believe I should remind all honourable members that under our Rule 27.(2), the mover of a motion on a matter of urgent public importance and one member of each of the parties in the House is allowed not more than five minutes to explain the urgency of debating the matter immediately.
As stated in Beauchesne's Citation 390, urgency in this context means the urgency of immediate debate, not of the subject matter of that motion. In their remarks, members should focus exclusively on whether or not there is urgency of debate and whether or not the ordinary opportunities for debate will enable the House to consider the matter early enough to ensure that the public interest will not suffer.
Mr. Lamoureux: Madam Speaker, I will just start off by indicating, of course, in order for every member to be able to contribute to the debate, that both the throne and budget debates have gone through and there is no legislation that is before us that would allow all members to be able to speak to this today or before the committee hearing on Monday.
Madam Speaker, I rise today on a matter of urgent public importance. I wish to explain to this House why this matter is sufficiently urgent that it should displace the ordinary business of the House. [interjection]
Madam Speaker: Order, please. I am experiencing great difficulty in hearing the honourable member for Inkster. I wonder if I might request the co-operation of those members holding meetings to do so outside the Chamber.
Mr. Lamoureux: As I have noted in my questions of yesterday and today, there is a serious problem with the lack of information being made available to the public concerning the operations and impact of the Manitoba Lotteries Corporation. Gambling is one of the most important and divisive issues in the province today. It is important that Manitobans have the opportunity to make meaningful contributions to the consultative process and not merely to be part of a public relations exercise.
With the public hearings being held across the province by the gaming policy review working group, it is more important than ever that the veil of secrecy that has surrounded the Lotteries Corporation be lifted. This matter must be debated immediately because the last set of hearings are scheduled for Monday, June 26, only six days from now. This may be the last opportunity we have to ensure that the concerned Manitobans making presentations to the working group on this contentious issue have the information they need to make a meaningful presentation.
Madam Speaker, if the Lotteries Corporation and the Addictions Foundation fail to make public the information that they have about gambling and its impact on our communities, how can Manitobans comment effectively on the direction they believe we should be taking to be able to judge the impact of gambling. Manitobans must know what it is doing to their province.
Madam Speaker, we have been calling on the government for months to produce a community-by-community breakdown of VLT revenues. They have failed to produce that. The length of delay is unacceptable. One of the most useful reports on gambling, the Volberg report, has never been issued publicly except in a heavily edited form. Now we have learned that the document produced by the information and awareness branch of the Addictions Foundation of Manitoba entitled Clients of the AFM Gambling Program and Callers to the Provincial Problem Gambling Help Line: A Statistical Profile and I quote, is an internal document and will not be made available to the public. This document contains valuable information on some of the more tragic social effects that gambling is having on the people of Manitoba. This is precisely the kind of information that people need to have in order to assess the impact that the gambling is having on their communities.
Madam Speaker, the Lotteries Corporation spends millions of dollars advertising on television, in newspapers and on billboards telling Manitobans they are making good things happen, but there is another side to gambling. The Manitoba Lotteries Corporation is also making some terribly tragic things happen. We know that, according to the Addictions Foundation report I mentioned earlier, 32 percent of people being treated for gambling problems last year tried to kill themselves. We know from this same report 14 percent of the callers to gambling hotline have turned to crime to support their habit.
Manitobans must know both sides of the gambling story. The gambling policy review working group was charged with the responsibility of examining all aspects of gaming in the province. To recommend future policy direction, the working group needs to hear how Manitobans feel about the impact that gambling is having on their communities and their province. Manitobans cannot comment effectively if vital information is withheld from them.
Time is running out, Madam Speaker. I want to ask this government to ensure that community-by-community breakdown of VLT revenues, an unedited version of the Volberg report and the report from the Addictions Foundation of Manitoba entitled Clients of the AFM Gambling Program and Callers to the Provincial Problem Gambling Help Line: A Statistical Profile be released to the public immediately.
Manitobans do not want the working group's report to be an exercise in rationalization or a whitewash. They want this working group to answer some of the very important questions surrounding the issue of gambling. This government has the opportunity to ensure that this happens. I trust and hope that we will receive support from all members of this Chamber to ensure that this debate is allowed to occur today. Thank you.
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Mr. Steve Ashton (Opposition House Leader): Madam Speaker, first of all, I would like to address the urgency of the issue and the issue in general, because we certainly have raised questions in this House about lack of information that is available, not only in terms of the type of information the member for Inkster is talking about but even the most basic thing of not having a breakdown made available in terms of lotteries expenditures by community.
The government has been promising data on a basis that they call, as soon as possible. Of course, Madam Speaker, this is the same government that has not called hearings on the Lotteries commission for close to two years.
That is unacceptable--[interjection] Well, for the member opposite, it has been that long--two years. Conveniently, just going into an election, the government did not want to have a discussion on lotteries, and, Madam Speaker, I do not think the government wants complete information or discussion on lotteries issues now either.
That is why it is like pulling teeth trying to get information out of this government, and as the member for Inkster (Mr. Lamoureux) pointed out, even information that is out there that has been produced, that is being made available, presumably for the commission, is not available for members of the public, and the government wonders why the process they are looking at, the working group, currently is receiving few submissions.
Madam Speaker, we believe it is an urgent matter to get that information to the public. Unless the public has full information, the process we are seeing now, the working group, which is a fine group of people, I make no criticism of that, headed by a very distinguished former member of the Legislature whom I served with for a number of years--the fact is unless that working group has full access to the information, it cannot bring in a report that is legitimate in terms of reflecting the full views of Manitobans. We believe there is a real need to discuss this matter.
Now the next question, obviously, Madam Speaker, is in terms of the question of having a matter of urgent public importance in terms of dealing with that. As the member for Inkster pointed out, we no longer are in budget debate. We are no longer in debate in terms of the throne speech. Quite frankly, I suspect that this is an issue where if you were to canvass the House, there will be many members of this House who would very much like to debate the whole question not only of this information but in terms of lotteries. I bet you there are a lot of other members on the government side that, given the chance, would very much like to debate this issue, because it is an issue that is dividing many Manitoba communities, certainly many rural communities in particular, where the issue is continuously being raised as the negative social impacts on the one hand and also the question of revenue drain from communities. I know in my own community of Thompson and the communities I represent, the surrounding communities, that is one of the major concerns.
I think, Madam Speaker, that is why the only avenue that is open to us now, since this government has continuously refused to call the Lotteries commission--we requested it last year. We requested it. Unfortunately, we are now going to have to deal with it in the fall. Since we do not have that format available, the only format available currently to debate this issue being the format of grievances going into Supply would not be appropriate. If we wait until after the Monday hearing, the final hearing, the Winnipeg hearing, that information will not be available to members of the public and this issue will not get the full and complete examination it deserves.
For that reason, Madam Speaker, we support the matter that is being proposed. We believe it would be in the public interest that we have a debate on lotteries in this House, a debate that is long overdue. So we support the request for a debate on lotteries taking place today as a matter of priority. We believe it is that important an issue. Thank you, Madam Speaker.
Madam Speaker: Order, please. I wonder if all the honourable members standing at the back of the Chamber would either please take their seats or leave the Chamber. I am having great difficulty hearing over the roar of these air conditioners and the distraction is most annoying.
Hon. Jim Ernst (Government House Leader): Madam Speaker, I am somewhat surprised by the member for Inkster and now supported by the members of the official opposition bringing forward a matter of urgent public importance with respect to lotteries.
Firstly, Madam Speaker, and I seek your guidance in this regard, the proposal that they refer to refers to two issues, neither of which are under the control of the government or the Legislature.
The first is a question reference the Manitoba Lotteries Corporation who have certain information, but it is a Crown corporation and there is a process to deal with Crown corporations and to seek information therefrom, both under Freedom of Information and before committees of this House when such corporations appear.
Secondly, as the Premier (Mr. Filmon) indicated during Question Period, certain information, raw data, I believe, as he referred to it, is in fact either in the purview of the Addictions Foundation of Manitoba--again an arm's length organization from government--or in the hands of the Desjardins commission who have in fact, as I understand it, from what the Premier said at least earlier today, requested that information be compiled.
It has not been analyzed. It is not of great value to anyone until at least there has been an analysis done by appropriate experts in this field who can at least translate for the members of the general public what this data means.
Madam Speaker, it may mean that it is very serious. It may mean that it is not very serious. The fact of the matter is it does need that analysis by experts in order to provide that information to the general public so they then can use it and use that information to formulate their opinion. So, Madam Speaker, I look to you to consider whether either of those items that are requested in the matter of urgent public importance are indeed under the purview of the government and/or the Legislature at all.
Secondly, Madam Speaker, with respect to the matter of urgent public importance, the Liberal Party, aided and abetted by the Winnipeg Free Press, spent probably six months and perhaps as much as a year prior to the election, and then at great lengths paid day after day front-page stories with respect to this issue of gambling during the election.
They spent 35 days trying to drum up a little interest in the general public, and they flunked. They flunked then and they are flunking again now. The fact of the matter is the public has had all kinds of information provided to it, some of it accurate, some of it wholly inaccurate, including studies from alleged professors at the University of Manitoba.
The public interest, Madam Speaker, has been served. It was debated for 35 days during the election and there is no way that this Legislature needs to waste its time with political ploy by the member for Inkster (Mr. Lamoureux), aided and abetted by the members of the official opposition. Certainly their motion is out of order.
Speaker's Ruling
Madam Speaker: I thank all honourable members for their advice as to whether the motion proposed by the honourable member for Inkster should be debated today.
I did receive the notice required under our subrule 27.(1). According to Rule 27 and Beauchesne's Citations 389 and 390, the two conditions required for a matter of urgent importance to proceed are: (a) the subject matter must be so pressing that the ordinary opportunities for debate will not allow it to be brought on early enough, and (b) it must be shown that the public interest will suffer if the matter is not given immediate attention.
As I understand the argument of the honourable member for Inkster, he is of the opinion that to have an informed public make presentations to a hearing next Monday, this House needs to today debate whether a statistical report on callers to the gambling help line and whether a report on the financial breakdown of VLT revenue should be released.
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I am not convinced that the public interest will suffer if we do not set aside the business of the House today to debate the honourable member for Inkster's request.
In terms of other opportunities to debate the matter, the honourable member could use the vehicle of a grievance or ask questions at the concurrent stage of the Supply process. In addition, I believe the motion raises two distinct matters, that is, release of a statistical profile of callers and provision of information on VLT revenue on a community-by-community basis. Our Rule 27.(5) prohibits this.
I am therefore ruling that the motion requesting a debate on a matter of urgent public importance does not meet the criteria set by our rules and practices.
Mr. Lamoureux: Madam Speaker, with all due respect, I would challenge the ruling of the Chair.
Madam Speaker: The ruling of the Chair having been challenged, the question before the House is shall the ruling of the Chair be sustained.
Voice Vote
Madam Speaker: All those in favour, please say yea.
Some Honourable Members: Yea.
Madam Speaker: All those opposed, please say nay.
Some Honourable Members: Nay.
Madam Speaker: In my opinion, the Yeas have it.
Mr. Lamoureux: Madam Speaker, just so it is noted that it is on division from at least two.
Madam Speaker: On division.
Committee Changes
Mr. Edward Helwer (Gimli): Madam Speaker, do I have leave to make a committee change?
Madam Speaker: The honourable member for Gimli with committee changes.
Mr. Helwer: I move, seconded by the member for Sturgeon Creek (Mr. McAlpine), that the composition of the Standing Committee on Law Amendments be amended as follows: the member for St. Vital (Mrs. Render) for the member for River Heights (Mr. Radcliffe). [agreed]