Everyone knew Tuesday’s city council meeting was really a funeral for Toronto’s casino dreams. People came to hear graveside speeches, even before the thing was officially buried. In total, 24 councillors signed a petition for this special casino meeting to take place, overturning Mayor Ford’s request to cancel it, and it obviously wasn’t to keep it alive. So the news that the casino is officially dead is as wonderful as it is unsurprising. So why even write about it? Two reasons.

First: Watching casino proponents squirm was very satisfying. They were so helpless, and observing them hold fast to their platitudes — like secured bandits refusing to renounce evil before sentencing — was fun. For example, Mammoliti unsuccessfully proposed examining the repercussions of not having a casino, while councillor Doug Ford accused the province and “some people in this room of having a problem with math, especially when it comes to money.” The pro-casino mantras that were once frightening when they had the potential to do real harm simply became amusing now that the pesky barking dogs have been neutered. To save face, casino proponents tried to deflect the blame squarely on the provincial government.

Well, there is something to this. To the future, I say: proceed with caution. Because although the reasons for a casino were always bogus to begin with (it only made sense for the people in charge), the idea likely to return. Not soon, but eventually. Everything about the process leading up to Tuesday’s vote tells me so.

The province said it wouldn’t force a casino on a municipality if it didn’t want one, yet casino proponents kept (rightly!) bringing up that if Toronto rejected the casino, one would be built on our border. The province said that, like it or not, a casino just had to be built somewhere, giving Toronto all the negatives and none of the revenue. It puts the hypocrisy into perspective: contrary to their claims, the province was indeed strong-arming casinos on an unwilling public to balance the budget, fully aware that casinos do, in fact, harm communities.

For two years the province and the casino magnates were a good match. Casino lobbyists spent over two years gauging Torontonians’ willingness about their pet project. (Councillor Adam Vaughan told me once casinos don’t enter a municipality without at least 30 per cent citizen approval.) I find it impossible to believe that Vegas lobbyists would come here, or stay long, without political willingness, too.

The OLG was, and still is, focused not only on obtaining money from tourists and casual gamblers, but also (and mostly) from problem gamblers. The province reasoned correctly that voters will find the phrase “balancing budgets by expanding gambling hugely” distasteful, not to mention clunky, so instead they went with “gaming modernization.” But a government in need of money is anything but modern. It is past, present and future. And after throwing so much of it away with both hands (gas plant with the right, other gas plant with the left), the thirst is real.

No wonder Las Vegas and Ontario had such chemistry. I bet there was sex after the first date. Both parties desperately wanted a casino downtown, but they didn’t count on such a strong resistance. This is the only way I can make sense of all the casino delays and complications that we’ve witnessed over the last few months. Yesterday’s meeting was supposed to take place months ago, but mysteriously got pushed back to May when it appeared council would vote against it. Either determining the funding formula was deliberately made into an act of rocket science and divulging it was impossible, or, more likely, as anti-casino sentiments heated up, the low and fixed result of the funding formula was withheld (or, if it was disclosed, seemed obscured by attaching to it the caveat that it could be higher). MGM and Cadillac Fairview’s disgustingly misrepresentative full page casino ads in national newspapers that depicted the lake, blades of grass weighed down by gleaming dew, multiculturalism, snowflakes, and yet painstakingly avoided the word “casino.” Like I said already, the Mayor even tried to cancel yesterday’s meeting, too. While I am not aware of what happened in back rooms between casino lobbyists and the province or city officials, it is clear to me that they very much wanted a casino here in the full knowledge that Torontonians didn’t.  

When the Fords et al. claim that the province under Wynne has been an unreliable partner because her Liberals refused to alter the funding formula especially for Toronto and fired Paul Godfrey as head of the OLG, they were right. (Props, Wynne.) While the official position from the province didn’t change from McGuinty to Wynne, something felt different. This morning when Rob Ford tried to pin the casino failure on Wynne, councillor Vaughan apparently joked that, given how demonstrably unpopular it was, she’d surely love to take the “blame.” (No doubt she’ll disassociate herself from it, simply noting that Torontonian voices were heard, although it did appear like the province was ignoring our voice, or, more accurately, trying to pass the casino quickly before citizens knew enough to feel like talking loudly.)

And that’s just it: despite the casino lobby’s misleading ads and tantalizing figures, it was still overwhelmingly rejected by citizens across the spectrum, major business leaders and architects, urban planners, the entire religious community, and, of course, in the end council voted 40-4 against it. Who exactly wanted it in the first place? The casino debate didn’t start because people inside our borders thought we lacked a casino. It came from outside Toronto, so it will come again.

Three former Toronto mayors wrote in a joint letter that a casino is anything but a “once in a lifetime opportunity” for the city, like casino lobbyists told us, because actually they were often approached to build one and rejected it each time. In other words, even when the idea is buried, as it currently is, casino lobbyists are like zombies that won’t die: They’ve tried and will try again. They have money and an insatiable desire for more. The city is in no mood for a casino now, but perhaps in fifteen years or so the Vegas people will return with stories about jobs, gambling addiction programs (without a trace of irony), and, naturally, money. The provincial government will need money as always, and expect Toronto citizens to largely forget this protracted casino debate.

At the conclusion of Tuesday’s meeting, people clapped and hugged and cheered, with smiles from ear-to-ear. Perhaps it’s smart to store those trusty anti-casino lawn signs somewhere safe. 

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Jeff Halperin is a Toronto-based writer. You can follow him on Twitter @JDhalperin.

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