Hotel bars are rarely open before noon, but Alberta Gaming officials pounded on the door of the Monarch Hotel at 7 a.m. on April 29 to take away its three video lottery terminals.
“It’s a sad day,” said bar maid Louise Hollander, who is worried now that the main source of income for the hotel in Monarch, Alta., has been removed.
“It’s going to hurt. I may lose my job.”
Monarch’s VLTS were among the 199 that the provincial government removed across the province one day after Alberta bar owners ended their court battle to keep video lottery terminals in communities that had voted in plebiscites to remove them.
Read Also
Rising vegetable oil demand may offset bad biofuel news
Global biodiesel/renewable diesel production is expected to decline for the first time in a decade. Bad timing for a canola industry looking for new markets.
Monarch is in the County of Lethbridge, which joined six other municipalities in 1997 and 1998 in voting to remove VLTs. The others were Lacombe, Stony Plain, Canmore, Coaldale, the County of Lethbridge, the Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo, which includes Ft. McMurray, and the Municipal District of Opportunity in northern Alberta.
Before Alberta Gaming officials could remove the machines, bar owners challenged the government’s ability to do so.
But on April 28, the day the coalition of bar owners was scheduled to be in court, they withdrew their court case. An earlier Supreme Court of Canada ruling from Manitoba upheld voters’ rights to keep the machines out of their communities.
The government is not mothballing the machines. The roughly 6,000 machines generate more than $600 million a year for the Alberta government. Each machine averages about $100,000 a year for the government and about $18,000 for the bar or lounge where it’s located. The machines that have just been removed will be distributed to other bars and lounges that have requested more machines.
Barry Marquardson, a member of the Lethbridge and Area Committee to Remove VLTs, said the decision was a “victory for the democratic process.
“We are really pleased,” he said.
“VLTs are the crack cocaine of gambling. Clearly they are a scourge on our communities. The costs outweigh the benefits.”
Marquardson said ideally they would like VLTs to be removed from all communities in the province, but he has to wait for government to write new rules about plebiscites.
The provincial government has no formal policy on plebiscites, but premier Ralph Klein has said that in the future it will likely respect similar community plebiscites to have VLTs removed or reinstated.
“I’m suspecting we would honour those wishes,” Klein said.
Saskatchewan has 3,700 VLT machines, which earn $180.8 million for the government and $35.6 million for the bars. Manitoba’s 5,261 machines generate $141 million in 583 locations.
Meanwhile, back in Monarch, Hollander said removing VLTs from her bar won’t have much of an impact on local residents, who will likely now drive the few kilometres to the city of Lethbridge to play VLTs. Residents of that community narrowly voted to keep the machines.
“It’s not fair,” Hollander said.
