Chances Gaming Centre: Doorway to heaven, or gateway to hell? Any day now some enterprising teacher will assign that essay question to an unsuspecting class.
According to some observers, this soon-to-open addition to the gambling fraternity, hosted by the Squamish Nation, will lead to our rack and ruin. They say it will attract an unsavory clientele and send the wrong message about the community.
Distressing scenarios have been submitted involving a spike in crime and wailing tots marooned in parked cars, clad only in the tattered remnants of their diapers, while daddy squanders the milk money on slots tokens.
We are told that casinos prey on the most vulnerable. Somehow gambling emporiums, like their close cousins those satanic liquor outlets, seem to have an insatiable appetite for welfare cheques; they feast on pogey payouts, and gobble up baby bonus allowances. So they say.
According to a range of studies, Native run casinos are profitable to varying degrees, depending on location. Those same studies warn that casino operations can lead to gambling addictions at the same time as programs to deal with gaming-related social issues are lacking in many communities.
Despite these alarm bells, First Nation sponsored casinos have taken root across the country. Neighbouring Alberta has five and the highly successful Casino Rama in Ontario even has a revenue sharing arrangement with 132 First Nations in that province.
In Washington State there are 20 Native American gaming facilities, including the mother of all Pacific Northwest gambling complexes, the Tulalip Resort Casino, just outside of Seattle.
First Nations business leaders have entered the commercial betting arena as a self-help strategy to remedy fiscal shortfalls on reserves and to generate jobs in communities where unemployment is well above the national average.
These undertakings usually come with low overhead, and they are relatively easy to initiate.
Legal gambling across Canada has ballooned from a $2.7 billion enterprise in 1992 to over $12 billion annually.
Non-Native, municipally run gambling facilities outnumber Native operations by a large margin, with little of the hand wringing associated with reserve-based operations.
The River Rock, Edgewater, and Gateway Casinos on the Lower Mainland, as well as the Great Canadian Casinos, have all become lucrative money mills.
So where does that leave the Squamish Nation project? Residents of the Shining Valley have been spending a few bucks at gaming centres across the Lower Mainland for a while now. Why not shop locally when it comes to games of chance and keep the cash flow in town?
There will be casualties. A number of frequent fliers, both locals and out-of-towners, will get hooked and may require intervention to counteract the unsettling consequences of problem gambling.
If all the projections are correct, traffic on the Sea to Sky Highway will likely double or even triple in the next few years.
Some of the disposable income slated for the amusements and allures of Whistler could easily be diverted to the Chances Gaming Centre, an enterprise that has the potential to become one of the most cost-effective ventures of its kind in the province.
