Loto-Quebec's poor man's tax taken to the limit

Let's say you have a friend who likely isn't doing nearly as well as you are financially. He's got a wife and kids and he's bleeding money. While pretending to be an even better friend, you send this person to a bookie to borrow money, knowing full well that your friend will end up getting even more screwed financially and likely lose his life because he will never be able to pay the thief back.

Let's now say that you, the friend of the people, are the Quebec government, whose crony Loto Quebec is screwing the citizens of this province on a daily basis with its many games of chance, where the odds of winning anything over a few dollars or a free ticket are virtually astronomical... and it can't open enough casinos to deprive already poor people from their food and rent money.

I am no virgin, you may be surprised to learn. And that extends to my predisposition to play Loto 6-49 once or twice a week and occasionally go to the casino. I have gone to the one in Montreal far too often, though not as much of late, and have been to the one in Charlevoix, Quebec, where a meteor once ploughed into the ground and carved out one of the largest impact craters on Earth and where, more recently, I won a $1,500 slot jackpot. I also won two similar jackpots at the Montreal casino, which occasioned me to visit again often enough that I have likely now lost as much as I have won there.

I have also been to Las Vegas nine times, once as part of an extended California honeymoon and several times as a journalist attending the opening of new properties. While the sites are indeed fascinating and entertaining and the buffets are cheap and extremely gluttonous affairs, you generally go to Las Vegas to gamble, though you can deny this till the cows come home. At first, I always won in Las Vegas, coming out $500 - $1,000 ahead every time out, but that too, ceased and the losses have been piling up to the point that I am not as anxious to go there anymore.

You see, gambling is addictive and in essence for losers. Yeah, I know that once in a while people win extraordinary amounts of cash, money that is non-taxable in Canada. But the casino people would be out of business in the blink of an eye if they were handing out more money than they take in. And they take in many millions more than they hand out, believe me.

So, Loto Quebec, in an infinite showcase of care and empathy for all the Quebec people who are unemployed, or elderly and living on fixed incomes, or mentally unstable, or just plain jackasses, has decided to go one step further in its role of psychotic state Robin Hood, taking from the poor to give to the rich. Mainly because its casinos in Montreal, Ottawa-Hull, Charlevoix and its latest cash cow in Mont-Tremblant aren't raking in enough millions every day to satisfy the cackling bureaucrats in charge, it has decided to take its obscene fishing derby onto the Internet.

Its rationale is quite simple: since so many Quebecers are pursuing on-line gambling run by other jurisdictions, that is unacceptable. If Loto Quebec can't have its share of those hard-earned, or too-easily-dispensed (think "welfare," ladies and gentlemen), funds, that simply isn't acceptable. So, Loto Quebec intends to start its own on-line gambling scam. Yeah, scam. Some people will become very wealthy as a result. Most, however, will not put as much food on the table for their children. Or won't have enough money for much-needed medicine.

Sol Boxenbaum, who hosts a radio show on CJAD radio, 800 AM here in Montreal, weeknights from 3 - 6 a.m., is a gambling addiction counsellor. I imagine Sol will be working his butt off to try to prevent this insidious plan from ever taking shape. If he fails, I ask Loto Quebec to at least give gamblers and potential gamblers another option. Hand them guns and let them shoot themselves first... it's far quicker than letting them slowly starve to death and eventually commit suicide anyways, when they have nothing left and are faced with living on the street.

And this is a cultured, forward-thinking society we live in? Give me a break.