As the City of Toronto begins a public consultation process to gauge the reaction to a casino, things got off to a rough start Wednesday when most of the residents in attendance abandoned the planned open-house format and, led by downtown councillors, started an impromptu consultation of their own.

The event began at 6 p.m. Wednesday evening, and attitudes among anti-casino councillors soured quickly.

"First of all, it's bad information," said Adam Vaughan (Ward 20, Trinity-Spadina). "The city manager continues to cling to a $168 million hosting fee when OLG has already contradicted him." Earlier this month a city-issued guide bookended a potential "hosting fee" from a Toronto casino at $50 million to 100 million.

"And then we've got a bad process," added Vaughan. "Different city staff are saying different things to different people."

Among the complaints about the consultation were diverging estimates of how much money a casino would bring to Toronto, the appearance of a pro-casino bias in some of the materials on display, and a belief that city staff had chosen an open-house format of consultation specifically to avoid the kind of input the city receives when hundreds of people come to a public meeting.

About 45 minutes into the three-hour evening, councillors Vaughan and Gord Perks (Ward 14, Parkdale-High Park) announced that anyone who wanted to express themselves in a more traditional, town-hall style format could head to City Hall's second floor.

"If nothing else, hundreds of people who live in Toronto will have had their voices heard," says Perks. City staff were not in Committee Room 2 as the meeting unfolded.

Toronto councillor Janet Davis takes notes Wednesday at the unofficial meeting that sprang from the public consultations on a possible casino for the city.

Before the upward exodus began, Vaughan called for a show of hands from the pro-casino and anti-casino residents in the rotunda. The anti-casino hands vastly outnumbered the pro-casino ones.

As events overtook the city's planned consultation, the departure of anti- (and some pro-) casino voices had one ironic result: leaving city staff mingling with a substantially thinner crowd that now consisted mainly of people quietly filling out forms, and lobbyists for the various firms interested in building a casino.

It was a rough start to one of the most wide-ranging public meeting processes that the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation's plan for casino expansions in the province has been subjected to. Three more open houses are planned in the Scarborough, Etobicoke-York, and North York divisions of Toronto, followed by another consultation downtown - this time at the Toronto Reference Library. The city manager will report to the powerful Executive Committee in March, which will itself be another opportunity for public feedback.

According to OLG spokesman Tony Bitonti, no other municipality in Ontario has subjected a casino to as much public scrutiny as Toronto has planned. The closest in terms of number of meetings is what the OLG has designated "C7", or the region around Collingwood and Wasaga Beach. Discussions in C7 involved not just meetings in those two towns, but also in the townships of Clearview and Springwater. Clearview and Springwater townships later voted against a casino.

"We're not leading this process," says Bitonti, "we're just going where we're invited." OLG has no formal role in the consultation process in Toronto.

Toronto's consultation isn't the first to face criticism from the anti-casino side. The Ottawa Citizen reported in November 2012 that city staff tried to stack that city's public meeting with pro-casino voices from the business community. Ottawa City Council voted to express an interest in an OLG casino.

Back in Toronto City Hall's rotunda, even the people who didn't join the improvised meeting were overwhelmingly opposed to a casino. Tom Abel, a University of Toronto graduate student who lives at Dufferin and Bloor in the city's west end, said he wants the strict conditions recommended by the city's Medical Officer of Health imposed on any future casino.

"I'm strongly opposed to a casino in any case, so I hope it doesn't come to that," said Abel.

While OLG's preference for a downtown casino—and OLG chair Paul Godfrey's remarks earlier in the week that the downtown core wasn't a residential area—left a bad taste in the mouths of many residents, future consultations in Toronto's inner suburbs might find a more receptive audience. Except for the Woodbine Racetrack, which already hosts 3,000 slot machines, the inner suburbs would be left untouched by OLG's expansion plan. But that could change if Markham or Vaughan accepts a casino.

"I support a casino in Toronto, because if we don't bring one to the city it will go to one of our neighbouring municipalities," said suburban councillor Vince Crisanti (Ward 1, Etobicoke North). "If that happens, we'll be left with all of the problems a casino would bring, without any of the benefits."

John Michael McGrath is a Toronto writer specializing in municipal affairs.

Toronto casino consultations get rough ride

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