Shame, Shame, Shame on the Ontario Government...

Shame, Shame, Shame on the Ontario Government… “Maximize Profits” or NOT? Shame, shame, shame and who should we blame? Buzz words like, “maximize profits” are flying around Queens Park when at the same time billion dollar assists are being sold off by Ontario government for a fraction of a penny on the dollar. Let me share this with you!  The former Rideau Regional Center in Smith Falls, Ontario was sold last year by Ontario Infrastructure and Lands Corporation (OILC) for the tidy sum of $100,000.  This 354 acre property was built with tax payer money in the 40’s and early 50’s. It has 50 interconnected buildings totalling over 800,000 sq ft.  The replacement cost with today’s tax dollars would exceed one billion dollars.  Do the math; the purchase price of $100,000 divided by the asset value today $1,000,000,000 which equals .00010 of a penny on the dollar and that is what was recovered from the sale of this asset.  Wait, this story isn’t over; OILC is now selling off a similar asset again bought with tax dollars in the late 50’s and 60’s and also worth about a billion dollars to replace today.  This time it’s a scenic 235 acre waterfront property with 29 interconnected buildings totalling over 650,000 sq ft of usable space. To make matters worse, these building had a face lift worth millions in the late 90’s and early 2000’s.  We are talking about the former Southwestern Regional Centre (SWRC) in Dealtown Ontario.  Within weeks, the government that wants to “maximize profits” for us tax payers is expected to sell this property less than its Smith Falls counter-part. Let me share a secret with you, a third such property is also being sold off but maybe OILC will get more for it? I’ll explain why I care about saving the Southwestern Regional Centre from the wrecking crews.  In its prime which was not that long ago this self-contained resort housed over 1200 guests.  It is located far from the hustle and bustle of any big city yet only a 10 minute country drive from Hwy 401, the busiest highway in North America.  The resort is perched on the north shore of Lake Erie in the hamlet of Dealtown which is part of Chatham-Kent, one of the largest yet poorest municipalities in all of Canada.  Since the late 90’s, over 13,000 jobs have disappeared from Chatham-Kent and the closing of the regional centre by OG accounted for over 600 of those lost jobs. The current Liberal government has had six years to find another use for these three billion dollar facilities but couldn’t come up with any.  Infrastructure Ontario contemplated converting the Dealtown centre into a juvenile correction facility but instead chose to build a new one in Finance Minister, Dwight Duncan’s Windsor riding at a cost of $247M and leave the Dealtown centre to decay.  Maybe they offered these facilities to the federal government, or maybe not.  Coincidently a few weeks ago, the local newspaper reported, and I quote the Ontario Correctional Services Minister Madeleine Meilleur, that “With (a Federal Bill) C-10, it’s a very new real possibility of having to build a new 1,000 bed facility (in Ontario). And these new facilities cost over $900 million.” Now for the punch line, or whatever you want to call it,  there is a solution that would see the SWRC transformed into the Dealtown Casino Hotel and Retirement Village for a modest $200M and at NO COST TO ONTARIO TAXPAYERS.  It takes only two signatures to make this happen.  This first signature is needed to stop the sale of the property to a doomed demolition crane and tax payer funded solar farm.  The second signature would grant the Dealtown Casino Initiative investment partners a licence to operate a resort casino.  Those two signatures would benefit all of Ontario but more specifically the devastated community of Chatham-Kent. The facility proposed for Dealtown would be a modest 2/3’s the size of the Windsor, Rama and Niagara centres. It would have fewer slots and table games in comparison to the big casinos and will chase a totally different market. This single initiative translates into 1,985 direct jobs, 1,489 indirect jobs and according to the experts another 752 induced jobs which experts say area a result of labour income spending.   That is a total of 4,227 jobs; that is four thousand two hundred and twenty seven new jobs, give or take. In conclusion, let me share some basic math with our Minister of Finance, Minister of Tourism, Culture and Sport, and Minister of Economic Development and Innovation!  Those new jobs will generate $190 million of taxable income based on an average salary of only $45,000/employee.  That represents about $20M in income taxes not to mention what OG might earn on casino revenues.  Now that is “maximizing profits” on a two signature investment! -30- By Brian Keenan   Brian Keenan Chairman Dealtown Casino Initiative