A Brighter Future For Hiawatha?
A revitalization of the of the horse racing industry – including Sarnia’s Hiawatha Horse Park - is part of the Progressive Conservative Party’s campaign platform according to Sarnia-Lambton’s MPP Bob Bailey.
In a Monday story on Blackburnnews.com, Bailey says the Ontario PC’s will get horse racing back on track by creating a horse racing scratch ticket, and return every dollar made from it to local racetracks.
“This government pretty well has destroyed it, they did their best to break the back of it,” says Bailey. “Horsemen and women and the industry has struggled but they stay involved and are there, so we’ve got something to build on. We’re going to try and restore it, it won’t happen overnight but I got a lot of time for that in Sarnia-Lambton with the track here at Hiawatha and the horse owners.”
The platform called the “People’s Guarantee” contains more than 140 promises. Ontarians head to the polls June 7, 2018.
(With files from Blackburnnews.com)
I agree with Terry. The
I agree with Terry. The government used our zoning and customer base. Now they have established casino gaming in the province and intend to relocate slots facilities away from the tracks. The racino formula is proven to be more effective than stand alone casinos. Casinos are proven to be economic black holes to communities in which they are placed (re: Casino Windsor). Part of establishing casino gaming within the province was to create employment. It would be interesting to see how the modernization plan has impacted employment in Ontario. One would think in this new era of transparency, AGCO would publish information regarding changes to employment, annual returns from slot machines and how those machines handle on dark vs live race nights. To say the current position by AGCO is failing, in my opinion, would be accurate. To solve it with a complete unknown variable while the previously established business model still stands is more of a head scratcher than a ticket scratcher.
Best news for racetracks to
Best news for racetracks to be heard yet. Hope it comes to fruition. Will really help industry.
PC platform should contain a
PC platform should contain a fixed % of gaming revenue to return to horse racing purses, a horse racing scratch ticket is a drop in the bucket of the required government revenue required and should leave all horse racing people scratching their heads.