@noel.semple7 An exciting new effort to ban internet gambling ads in Ontario #onPoli ♬ original sound – Noel Semple
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Transcript:
Internet gambling ads are everywhere in Ontario. This one team of researchers watched a single Raptors playoff game and they counted 799 ads and sponsored references to internet gambling during just one game. And of course, it’s not just TV, it’s the billboards, it’s the internet ads. It’s just like saturation marketing. And the reason why these companies spend so much money on the ads is because they work. They are successfully hooking a whole new generation of gamblers, mostly young men. You only have to get someone to download the app and then they’ve got this highly addictive, highly expensive habit which is living in their pocket 24/7.
And a lot of people in Ontario are gambling money they can’t afford to lose, because it should be supporting their families or saved for the future. Or it could even just be contributing to the Ontario economy. Almost a hundred billion dollars was gambled on the internet in Ontario last year and four billion of that was profit, which was sucked out of people’s pockets into these corporations, most of which are foreign.
This is a predatory system, and it took root in Ontario and nowhere else in Canada for the same reason we had the green belt scandal and the skills development fund scandal, which is that the Premier and his cabinet are willing to take calls from lobbyists and well-connected millionaires who have plans that will make them very rich and the Ford government’s going to try to make It happen for you if you’ve got the Premier’s phone number and you’re considered a friend of the government, and it doesn’t really matter who suffers or how the public interest is affected. That’s why we ended up with this system with all of these private companies competing to hook as many gamblers as possible and with the right to saturate every airwave, internet site, and sports game with non stop gambling ads.
But on Monday, someone stood up in the Ontario legislature and took a stand against this and that person is MPP Lee Fairclough who represents Etobicoke Lakeshore for the Ontario Liberal Party. And Lee is a mother of two teenage boys and she’s someone who has run a hospital and has extensive experience in mental health. So she knows as well as anyone in Ontario how dangerous this addictive product is and how much damage we’re doing to our next generation as well as the current generations by letting this advertising free-for-all continue. So she introduced Bill 107 which would simply ban advertising for internet gambling in Ontario.
So if you agree that it’s time to end this madness, then please visit MPP Fairclough’s site and sign the petition to send a message to the government that things have got to change. So internet gambling, it’s basically like tobacco or marijuana. Some people can use it and it’s just harmless fun but it’s also very addictive. And it’s especially dangerous to young people. So just like tobacco or marijuana, if internet gambling is going to be legal, it should not be advertised. That shouldn’t be something we are exposing our young people to. So, thanks for listening. Check out the website and I hope to talk more about this, over the next couple weeks.