A spokesman for Kawartha Downs stepped up to the plate Tuesday, July 10 when he explained that the Fraserville, Ont. raceway's No. 1 preference is to keep the current arrangement in place which sees harness racing supported in part by slot-machine revenue.
It was roughly one month ago when spokesman Trevor McCagherty, speaking on behalf of Kawartha Downs Owner Harvey 'Skip' Ambrose, confirmed with Trot Insider that unless some sort of revenue agreement is reached, the raceway would not be able to host live harness racing at the track beyond March 31, 2013, the day in which the highly-successful slots-at-racetracks program is to be inexplicably scrapped by the Ontario Liberal Government.
Explaining Kawartha's position to The Peterborough Examiner yesterday, McCagherty stated that the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corp.'s slots-at-racetracks program "is clearly the most successful program the government has, by far, and it should be continued.”
Although Kawartha has let its position of support for the Ontario horse racing be publicly known to the industry and all of the province's political parties, it has also made prudent backup plans if the Ontario Liberals go through with killing the OLG's most lucrative program.
The Peterborough Examiner's report explains that Kawartha has notified the OLG that the raceway would like to be considered as a host for a new, larger 'casino-style' gaming facility if such a facility is in fact coming to the 'Eastern Ontario: Zone 1' gaming zone that the track has found itself in under the OLG's controversial gaming modernization plan.
Kawartha's declaration of support for the industry was just one element of the overall news that came out of Fraserville on Tuesday. Both the The Peterborough Examiner article and a report by mykawartha.com explain that stakeholders and government officials met at Kawartha Downs on Tuesday to discuss the disastrous effect the Ontario Liberals' decision to inhumanely kill the SAR program will have on the local area.
Commenting on the impact the scrapping of the SAR program would have an area residents, the mykawartha.com article has quoted Haliburton/Kawartha Lakes MPP Laurie Scott as saying, "It's thousands of jobs" and that "the ripple effect is huge. Do you realize your neighbours could be employed through this industry?"
MPP Monte McNaughton, the PC Economic Development and Innovation critic, was also at Kawartha. In regard to the Ontario Liberals' push to cram its gaming modernization plan into place while completely decimating the provincial horse-racing industry, McNaughton, a strong supporter of the SAR program, said "We think the government needs to slow down."
(With files from The Peterborough Examiner and mykawartha.com)