gambling in alberta - Research Services - University of Lethbridge

IMPACTS ON SOCIETY
The citizens of Alberta are the ones who partake in legalized gambling and are also the primary
recipients of the benefits disbursed by the provincial government and charitable organizations.
Thus, they constitute a particularly important sector in which impacts are anticipated.
Government and Charitable Services
As has already been clearly stated, Albertans are the direct recipients and primary beneficiaries
of the roughly $2 billion dollars annually that the provincial government and charity/community
organizations have collected in net gambling revenue in the past few years (Figure 28, p. 125).
In addition, beginning in 2007 Albertan citizens of First Nations communities have also started
to receive similar direct benefits deriving from the new First Nations casinos. These collective
benefits are primarily manifest in terms of maintained and/or perhaps enhanced public
services, and/or a decreased need to raise involuntary taxes (in the case of non-First Nations
communities). These represent some of the most important and unambiguously positive
benefits of legalized gambling in Alberta. (Maintained and/or enhanced public services have
tended to be a reliable impact of gambling across all jurisdictions that have studied this issue
(Williams, Rehm, & Stevens, 2011)).
Employment
Most studies of the socioeconomic impacts of gambling have found increased employment
associated with gambling introduction (Williams, Rehm, & Stevens, 2011). However, this is
primarily due to the limited scope of most of these studies, in that they only examined
employment changes in the local region where the new gambling venue was located without
determining whether there were potential losses in other regions. When a larger geographic
scope is used, then net jurisdiction-wide employment gains are not usually found (Williams,
Rehm, & Stevens, 2011). These same investigators have also found that there are significantly
different gambling impacts as a function of type of gambling. There is greater potential for
employment gains in labour intensive forms of gambling such as horse racing and casinos, and
greater potential for employment losses with automated forms of gambling such as EGMs.
There are a couple of sources of data that can potentially speak to employment impacts of
gambling for Alberta. One source is the provincial database for registered gaming workers.
Anyone who is paid to assist a licensed gambling facility (e.g., casino, racing entertainment
centre, bingo hall) is required to register with the Alberta Gaming and Liquor Commission as a
gaming worker, as a condition of employment. This includes security guards, cashiers, book
keepers, etc., in addition to personnel who directly deliver or manage the gaming operations
(e.g., slot operators, slot managers, pit bosses, bingo hall manager, etc.). Unfortunately,
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