Toronto casino proposal voted down by city council
Posted May 21, 2013 5:28 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
TORONTO – Toronto is not going to roll the dice on a downtown casino.
City council rejected a proposed downtown casino for the city and expansion at Woodbine Racetrack Tuesday.
Mayor Rob Ford called the issue “dead” last week at an impromptu news conference and cancelled a special meeting to consider the proposal, which was later reinstated by a group of councillors.
After debating the issue, council voted 40-4 against the proposal.
The mayor tried to convince council to allow expansion of gaming at Woodbine, but that motion was also defeated 31-13.
Coun. Mike Layton says he and his colleagues voted against a casino after hearing from constituents.
“The people of Toronto have spoken here. Councillors were being pressured by their constituents, by the people of Toronto to vote no.”
“I think that’s why you see that 40-4 vote at the end of day with council sending a strong note to the province: we don’t want casino expansion in the city of Toronto.”
Coun. Giorgio Mammoliti says the city just blew a chance to make money and now it will have to raise taxes.
“That’s what happened today. I think it’s a shame. I think it’s a concerted effort by some councillors to hijack council.”
During the debate, Ford accused Premier Kathleen Wynne of being opposed to a Toronto casino and the jobs it would bring.
“I don’t know why the premier does not support 10,000 good-paying, union jobs,” he said.
“No deal is good enough for this premier. Fact is, she simply doesn’t want a casino — at least not in Toronto.”
Ford slammed Wynne, accusing her of sabotaging casino plans by offering an Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corp. hosting fee of $39-million a year versus the $100-million the city wanted.
“It’s becoming crystal clear that this will never happen under the leadership of premier Wynne.”
But Wynne said she’s maintained from the beginning that every municipality should be treated the same when it comes to revenue sharing from casinos.
The decision to host a casino is “rightly in the hands of municipalities,” she said.
“I don’t think this is a personal debate between me and any other politician in the province,” Wynne said.
“I think this is about a principle — which is, municipalities should be able to make this decision.”
Wynne asked OLG to revise their funding formula in March after reports surfaced it was offering a special deal to Toronto that would see the city collect $100 million in hosting fees.
But the government’s refusal to divulge the formula last week sparked an angry Ford to denounce the Liberals for spoiling plans for a casino.
Wynne fired OLG chairman Paul Godfrey later that day, prompting the entire board of directors to resign.
Godfrey has said he wasn’t given a reason for his dismissal, but Wynne told him the government was “going in a different direction.”
Wynne said Tuesday that there were “critical” points of divergence.
They included the “fairness” of a casino formula to ensure Toronto didn’t get a special deal, she said. They also differed on the integration of the horse-racing industry — which was devastated after OLG ended the slots-at-racetracks program — into the corporation’s modernization strategy.
As for the video allegedly showing the mayor using drugs, Ford refused to talk about it.
680News reporter Kevin Misener and CityNews reporter Cynthia Mulligan were at City Hall covering the story. Read a re-cap of their live tweets below:
