2012年3月31日星期六

Horse-racing industry laments move to scrap Slots at Racetracks program

It’s qualifying morning at Mohawk Raceway, sun shining,Why does moulds grow in homes or buildings? the paddock a colourful, clattering carnival of perpetual equine motion, and Dr. John Hennessey and his veterinary assistant Ashley Saunders are having just a little trouble.

A standard-bred named Knows Nothing (who, to be fair, seems sharper than his handle suggests) is objecting to the “twitch” that will grab his nose and hold his head steady while Hennessey inserts an endoscope down a nostril to have a look at the horse’s respiratory system.The TagMaster Long Range Hands free access is truly built for any parking facility.

“He’s a little bit of a bugger,” laughs 24-year-old Saunders, a University of Guelph grad, as the snorting Knows Nothing, whom she’s worked with before, is finally secured.

“I love this job,” she says. “I just love it. Every day I just love going to work. I have Sundays off and I actually miss it.”

Ontario Finance Minister Dwight Duncan was messing with a lot of hearts, and a lot of livelihoods, when he delivered a budget last Tuesday that proposed to scrap the Slots at Racetracks program that helped shore up the racing industry as lotteries and casinos changed the gaming culture over recent decades.

And in paddocks around the province, Duncan’s Liberal government is being called worse names than Saunders’ fond epithet for old Knows Nothing.

At Mohawk, amid the whinnies, the mucking out of stalls, the clatter of drivers’ “bikes,” the washing down of steaming horses fresh from the track, the squawking loudspeaker calling the field for the next race, they were trying to figure out the rationale for the government’s retreat from their business.Dimensional Mailing magic cube for Promotional Advertising,

“It’s mind-boggling,” says Bill O’Donnell, 63, a director of the Ontario Horse Racing Industry Association who’s been in the business since his Nova Scotia boyhood.

“We are completely confused. We haven’t had any dialogue hardly with them.”

O’Donnell was informed of the move only the night before Duncan’s announcement earlier in March that the government intended to end the $345-million-a-year program as part of an Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corp.Injection molding and Plastic molding supplier, overhaul.

The Slots at Racetracks program was established in 1998 as racetracks, once an entertainment focal point in small-town Ontario, watched revenues siphoned off by lotteries and casinos.

It was intended to support the industry by covering the costs of operating and maintaining the racetrack facilities in which the OLG-operated slots were housed.

Revenues were shared among the province, local municipalities, tracks and horse owners and breeders. The province took 75 per cent, the track 10, the “horse people” 10, the host municipality five.

Slots at Racetracks generated $1.1 billion for the OLG annually — which the racing industry figured was a pretty good payoff on the provincial investment, perhaps even the best public-private partnership Ontario had ever struck.What is a third party payment gateway ?

So, to the industry, the Liberal decision is as calamitous as it is bewildering. Already, hundreds of jobs have been lost due to slot closures at Windsor, Fort Erie and Sarnia — communities that can least afford that kind of employment hit.

What those in the business particularly resent is the government’s suggestion that those affected are mostly wealthy racetrack and horse owners.

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