The Federal and Provincial Gov’t (of all stripes) Thank You for your donation.

I appreciate all of you adding to the government coffers.. Just think how this government would be gouging us even more without this volunteer taxation.

I remember when it was illegal to gamble by buying a lottery ticket. Irish Sweepstake tickets were being sold under the table! How times have changed! Now anything goes!

Revenue up , what a surprise. I guess its because its the only casino in the area. It certainly isn’t because of the way its run. First thing..the security at the front doors have NO personality. You can’t even get a Hi out of most of them , you are lucky to get a nod. A couple older gents and a lady is nice , but the others should be fired. Second..the food is ok , but no selection ( bring back the buffet ) The bingo area stinks and is dirty. Third..The poker room is a joke..No management at all..The pit bosses are horrible , and have no idea how to run a poker room…Most dealers are horrible , so slow , yapping with the customers etc. The front of the poker room needs a wall , just to keep out the noises from the VLT’s. Boring game also..1-2 , 200 buy-in , that’s old school..Have a 1-3 with 500 buy-in and 2-5 with 1000 buy in. then you have more grumpy security walking around like they hate there jobs and most cases the pit bosses at the tables are grumpy. The cash girls behind the cage and the cash girls walking around are very nice , also the ladies at the front desk are very nice.

P Val, some retired friends of mine frequent the casino a few times a month. They refer to the place as the Senior Citizens Recreation Place!
He says that the Casino and lottery tickets are the only form of taxation where he gets a chance to get some of his money back, haha!

Hart Guy..lol.. Yeah.. just not my thing.. I do donate occasionally to the lottery.. but would rather spend the money on a nice dinner with my lady than the casino…but as they say…each to their own :)

It seems we are willing to change the name of a park, but we are unwilling to give First Nations in BC what the US has been doing for over 20 years and what a handful of Canadian provinces are doing, let First Nations operate casinos on their lands.

For example, in 2010, total net receipts from the Washington state’s tribal casinos, bingo parlors, card rooms, lottery sales, horse racing and pull tabs and punchboards was $2.292 billion. That was 77% of all gambling net receipts in Washington. With an Aboriginal population of just over 100,000 that is around $22,000 per person.

In 2012, Indian casinos in the USA combined for a new annual gaming revenue record, topping $28.13 billion. Indian casinos made 43 percent of all U.S. casino gaming revenue in 2012.

The top five states, California, Oklahoma, Washington, Florida and Connecticut, accounted for 60 percent of the USA’s Indian gaming revenue.

Indian casinos, including the properties’ nongaming operations directly and indirectly generated $91 billion in output, employed more than 679,000 workers, paid $30 billion in wages, and contributed $9 billion in taxes and revenue-sharing payments to federal, state, and local governments.

In Canada there are 15 First Nation Casinos. There are 18 in Washington State alone. B.C. First Nation groups have been lobbying for a share of gambling revenue since at least 1993. The only native-owned casino in B.C. is part of the St. Eugene Resort near Cranbrook.

gopg2015, do the Indians in the USA receive the same degree of Government Funding as they do here in Canada?

It seems to me and you can correct me if I am wrong, the U.S.A. reached a settlement agreement of some sort with their First Nations peoples. It was a case of “ok, now we are done, go look after yourselves”. Casinos were but one of the industries that became revenue sources to replace what had previously been coming from Government.

Here in Canada, the Federal Government funds First Nations to the tune of billions of dollars each year. If First Nations were granted gaming licences, would they be willing to use them to generate an income with the understanding that what they currently receive from Government would or might be reduced or eliminated?

There are First Nations in Canada that already receive income from the mining and oil and gas sectors. Some are reaching agreements for lump sum payments and revenue sharing from the pipeline industries and BC Hydro. Will they still receive what they have been receiving from Government or would that amount be reduced because of what they will receive from industry?

The closest I’ve ever gotten to a casino is the Vancouver stock exchange ,now the venture exchange but still mostly the junk exchange . Steve still thinks there’s no recession . I guess he can’t read the exchange numbers either or do comparisons. Good deflection though . Worry about natives money while the country is going bankrupt and our dollar is being devalued deliberately .

I find it interesting that the percent of revenue attribute to slots for Treasure Cove is significantly higher than the other casinos. It’s actually a striking difference. What is the reason for that? Different demographics? Bigger table games at the other casinos? More disposable income in those other locations (easier to play lower values in slots than at the tables)?

Does this trend say anything about Treasure Cove and gambling in PG as compared to other locations?

In America they declared war on the natives.. Can’t compare to us at all.

‘It seems we are willing to change the name of a park, but we are unwilling to give First Nations in BC what the US has been doing for over 20 years and what a handful of Canadian provinces are doing, let First Nations operate casinos on their lands. – So the natives need more handouts in your mind? lol
Oh, this isn’t ‘their land’ any more, hate to break it to you.

War can only be declared by one nation against another. War was never declared on Indians because to do that one would have to recognize their territory.

The Americans simply had what they called Indian Wars. Sort of the same as war on drugs. They call a lot of things wars. They were simply battles. Or you might call it an offensive war, and expansionist war, a war of occupation. Clean the occupants out of their homes kind of war.

They did declare war on Britain in 1812, with one of the reasons being that the British who ruled this part of North America at the time were encouraging the Aboriginals to raid over the border.

Aboriginals were wiped out along the east coast as well as in the Spanish occupied territories of what is now the USA long before they were a country to allow them to declare war on anyone. Even Britain could not have declared war on the Aboriginals.

That being said, it seems that those who won the “war” of occupation treat their old enemies much better than the Canadians who have more of that British colonial heritage left in them.

Oh, this isn’t ‘their land’ any more, hate to break it to you.

Could have fooled me. For a people who do not have any land here anymore, they sure have more of a say in what is going on than you or I do.

NMG > I think demographics is the main thing, but also it is a one horse business – gaming. There is a hotel; two or so food outlets that are of questionable quality and value. There is no entertainment capacity which they promised originally, put in something less than promised, and now is virtually dead. There is no convention facility.

As far as gambling goes, I suspect most people around here like the simple motion of pulling a lever or pressing a button these days and take your chances. It is mind deadening. No thinking required.

Most of the “Indian” casinos in Washington have other services associated with them. P Val mentioned he would prefer to go out to a nice dinner. The casino closest to the Canadian border, Silver Reef on the Lummi Reserve, is frequented by Vancouver tour buses and typically has about 50% BC license plates in the parking lots. There are 10 separate eating spots in the resort. The River Rock has 7, for instance. The best steak and seafood restaurant outside Seattle is located in that facility. The Steak House will likely cost you around US$200 for a couple with wine and tip.

They have a convention facility which switches over to an entertainment venue about the same size as River Rock but without the balcony so it is a flat floor for entertainment with raised stage. Some of the same shows play there.

The River Rock has 202 hotel rooms. The Silver Reef has 105 with the second wing almost completed so they will have the same number. The listed prices on the rooms are about 25% less at the Silver Reef, but with the current conversion of US to CAN $, they end up being on par.

The size of the population served by the Silver Reef is about the same as PG. However, they do have the traffic from Vancouver which we do not have.

So, our Casino is basically a gambling machine, nothing more. Sort of fits the town in general. It is the North. What more can one expect?

Hart Guy > The questions you ask are very difficult to research. It would take a week of solid work on my part and even then there would be controversy, from me included. Why? Because it is easy to find out how much money the government spends on a specific reserve ( the larger the reserve, the better) and then compare that to what non-natives Canadians receive. Someone did that kind of calculation and his answer was that from Feds and Province of Ontario non-native Canadians receive $17,940/person in services while natives on a 1,929 member Attawapiskat Reservation receive $11,993/person. That is output.

What was not included, of course, is input. How much taxes are paid by those in Ontario and by those on the reservation. There are natives living on reserve who work off reserve and pay income tax and buy things off reserve and pay sales tax. It is not a “clean” calculation. Someone working with those figures would have a good idea. I do not think the feds or the provinces are interested in making it easy to find for the public. The same with the US figures.

As far as getting money from resource extraction, that is true in some cases and not in others. Here are two “nots” from 3 years ago.
• an estimated $100 million per year is extracted from the territories belonging to the Algonquin of Barrier Lake. They get nothing from it.
• DeBeers is constructing a $1 billion mine on the lands belonging to the Atawapiskatowi ininiwak with an anticipated revenue of $6.7 billion. the owners of those lands will see none of that money,
• over $14 billion of oil and gas has been extracted from lands belonging to the Lubicon Cree. They get nothing. They don’t even have running water.

The only money that natives get from native lands that I am aware of are from the leasehold properties in the GVRD where the band gets money from those living on their land. There is one in Kamloops as well, I believe. Maybe someone else knows about any agreements where First Nations are actually getting money from resource extraction.

Yes, I see your point gopg2015. I actually took in a show at the Turning Stone Resort Casino in central New York. This resort is owned by the Oneida Indian Nation and it is NICE. There are several beautiful golf courses (I believe one of them has hosted a PGA tour event), there is the casino, upscale dining, hotel space, a spa, etc. It’s a gorgeous facility. The concert hall (a small intimate venue) had simply incredible acoustics. What a great place to take in a concert.

This particular facility is located about 3.5 hours south of Ottawa and only about 40 minutes east of Syracuse. Needless to say, they have a huge population to draw from. I’m sure it’s a very successful venture and contributor to the local economy and that of the Oneida Nation. I see no reason why something like that couldn’t work in a Kamloops, Kelowna, Fraser Valley or even on the Island.

http: //vancouvernotvegas.ca/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/3538.gif

Lheidli T’enneh receives a (small, I think) percentage of the revenue from the casino.

Charities and non-profit community groups are getting an ever shrinking part of revenues from casinos as well, from 33% of gaming revenues down to 10% of gaming revenue from 1999 to 2015.

www. theglobeandmail.com/news/british-columbia/charities-want-their-fair-share-of-gambling-profits/article9293014/

This explains why the little boy in the car window has the word “charities” on his shirt, in the my previously posted cartoon.

gopg2015, several years ago, a friend of mine told me that the Bands north of Fort St. John were receiving very large payouts, something in the neighbourhood of $50,000.00 per man, woman and child. He said that the automobile dealers had brought in tons and tons of new fully loaded vehicles, especially big fancy pickups in anticipation of the payout!

I have no issue with the Bands receiving payments for resource development, etc. I just wonder if these reduce the amount that Bands receive from the Federal Government (the taxpayer)?

As far as The Attawapiskat First Nation is concerned, De Beers “has transferred about $10.5 million to a trust fund held by Attawapiskat as of January 2011. The Attawapiskat Trust, established January 1, 2007, receives payments made by De Beers Canada and Attawapiskat Limited Partnership (ALP) as part of the Victor Diamond Project Impact and Benefits Agreement (November 3, 2005-11-03) (Financial Statements Attawapiskat Trust 2012 p. 4). The beneficiary of the trust includes “all members of Attawapiskat on a collective and undivided basis (Financial Statements Attawapiskat Trust 2012).

So, it would appear that the Band is receiving some sort of benefit from the De Beers diamond mine. I am not aware if this amount reduces the amount received from the Federal Government. If not, in my opinion, it should!

Had to read through the article a couple of times, and nowhere in it do they mention “Natives” “First Nations” or “Aboriginals”… from a story about Treasure Coves’s annual revenue the discussion ends up at Attawapiskat in northern Quebec.