Burgess Pens Letter To Auditor General

Published: October 22, 2012 11:33 am EDT

This past Friday, much respected standardbred breeder/owner Robert Burgess sent an open letter to MPP Jim McCarter, Ontario's Auditor General, and MPP John Milloy, Liberal House Leader, calling for the third reading of MPP Monte McNaughton's gaming referendum bill and a full review and audit of the Ontario Lottery and Gaming's controversial gaming modernization plan.

The contents of Burgess' letter appear below.


Dear Mr. McCarter:

Under the pretext that it was 'modernizing gaming' the directors and management of the OLG, a Crown agency, convinced Messrs. McGuinty and Duncan to completely destroy the standardbred racing and breeding industries in Ontario. This is a tragedy.

Since 2010 the principal directors of the OLG have been (like Mr. Dale Lastman, counsel to Mr. Larry Tanenbaum) and continue to be representatives of the land development business and friends and business associates of Mr. Paul Godfrey and Mr. Larry Tanenbaum. Even though the slots-at-racetracks program ('SARP') is world renowned and is a respected model for many other jurisdictions, Messrs. Godfrey and Duncan refused to allow even a single representative from racing to be a member of the nine-member OLG Board of Directors.

This blunt denial of representation for Ontario racing was made despite the fact that racing was by far OLG's most lucrative product (over 14 billions of dollars contributed to the Ontario treasury over the life of the SARP program) and the fact that the OLG charitable casinos consistently lost money.

In these circumstances, this Liberal Government had absolutely no mandate from the citizens of Ontario to destroy 55,000 jobs or to deprive the Ontario treasury of over a billion dollars of revenue annually.

This precipitate cancellation of the SARP program would appear, in my opinion, to have been designed only to assist friends and important contributors to the Liberal Party like Mr. Larry Tanenbaum in establishing a large bingo empire with slot like machines that pay him 47% of the proceeds. Incidentally, racing receives only 20% of the proceeds as the Government's partner under the SARP program they have so abruptly cancelled.

Please review and audit this peculiar situation that does not seem to exemplify good government by the people for the people.

Robert B. Burgess Q.C.


Tags
Have something to say about this? Log in or create an account to post a comment.