Gamblor’s World

Randy Burton, The StarPhoenix, Thursday, May 17, 2007

It’s no surprise that the Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations (FSIN) should demand all of the money rolling into the casinos it operates throughout the province.

After all, Lawrence Joseph began his tenure as FSIN chief last November by threatening to scrap his organization’s gaming agreement with the provincial government altogether. Making demands for all of the revenue can only be good politics for him.

What is surprising is that the province would refuse to spell out its guiding principles in talks aimed at negotiating a new five-year gambling agreement.

It refuses to say anything about what it is prepared to offer the FSIN until after it has signed off on a new deal. In other words, the government will tell the public what’s happening with public money only after the decisions have been made.

It would be useful for folks to know what the stakes are in advance.

While the FSIN ignores this fact, Native-run casinos in Saskatchewan were established as a partnership between First Nations and the government.

Back in 1995, the province agreed to end a standoff over gaming jurisdiction by allowing the FSIN to build four casinos — at White Bear, Yorkton, Prince Albert and North Battleford. Two more are in the works now on the Whitecap reserve and in Swift Current.

The government gave the FSIN an effective monopoly over casinos outside of Regina and Moose Jaw and later extended it to the Saskatoon market. In exchange, the government retained jurisdiction over gambling and took 37.5 per cent of the profits.

That’s some $15 million a year the FSIN would like to keep. So when it talks about getting the government out of its casino operations, the implicit message is that things would go on just as they are now, except the government would get no money out of it.

As sweet as this would be for the FSIN, it’s a remote prospect. Whether the FSIN cares to consider it or not, such a fundamental change to the gaming agreement would have far-reaching implications.

If the province were to lose its share of revenue from First Nations casinos, then the idea of a partnership would die. It follows that if there is no further partnership, the question of a monopoly would also have to be revisited.

It simply makes no sense to give one group the exclusive right to run casinos and exclude every other interested operator, unless the province as a whole reaps some benefit from the arrangement. That benefit evaporates as soon as the province loses its share of gaming revenue.

So if the present agreement with the FSIN is to be torn up, there is no reason for government to prevent others, such as charitable groups, from establishing their own casinos. This would represent more of a mixed approach to gaming, a model used by the government of Alberta and others.

Obviously, this would mean competition for the First Nations casinos in the communities in which they already operate. Some would no doubt survive. Others might not.

This is the very scenario the provincial government sought to avoid when it first struck a deal with the FSIN back in the early 1990s. With no limits, there could be a casino on every reserve, and in every city and some small towns, too, for that matter.

If you follow this line of thinking very far, you soon realize it is in the FSIN’s best interests to maintain the present partnership.

Protected from competition, the First Nations have an opportunity to make a lot of money. In an open market, it could be a very different story.

If the province is to make any concessions in the current round of negotiations, the question becomes what it is to get in exchange. For example, even 12 years after the beginning of the Saskatchewan casino experiment, there is still inadequate accountability for how reserves spend their share of gaming revenues.

There is no way for an individual band member on a Saskatchewan reserve to find out how a chief and council spend the money they are given by the First Nations Trust, which collects 37.5 per cent of casino revenues. That money is intended to benefit reserve residents. It’s not too much to ask that it be accounted for in detail.

The NDP government has never been able to deliver that, and the Opposition Saskatchewan Party does not care to discuss it, which suggests it would do nothing about it in government either. Only Liberal Leader David Karwacki is willing to take a stand on the issue.

These issues are important, given that existing provincial gaming policy is to help the FSIN achieve full jurisdiction over gaming. That would require amendments to the federal Criminal Code which, of course, is beyond the province’s power to deliver.

If that means relinquishing all control over First Nations gaming, the public deserves to know what that’s going to mean before it happens.

© The StarPhoenix (Saskatoon) 2007