Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Further to the debate about the problem of alcohol, Mr. Minister, you might have noticed in the Social Programs committee report, we talk about the importance of the need to highlight the problem of gambling. I think of it as how a while back it was not often mentioned when one was describing Canada from sea to sea. Usually people described Canada from being sea to sea until national leaders started referring to it as from sea to sea to sea, to include the Arctic Ocean. In that way, I think that it's about time that in the North we acknowledge the problem of not only alcohol and drugs, but also gambling. I think the problem with gambling in the North is much more serious than people are willing to admit. In fact, it's so unappreciated, it's not really even being discussed.
As many people know and it's commonly understood in addiction language, it's not uncommon for people to leave one addiction and then jump into another. Some people might think they quit drinking and it's okay to be addicted to smoking because it's the lesser of two evils or some people might think if you get out of alcohol addiction, somehow gambling isn't as bad or vice versa. We need to make sure as a government to conduct campaigns wherever you are doing wellness or healthy living, we should be comprehensive in that regard.
I understand it's probably a whole new area because of the fact that so many NGOs and charitable organizations rely upon gambling revenue, on lottery tickets and other forms of gambling, to get their income. I am willing to admit that not all gambling per se is bad. Lottery tickets, raffle tickets, if it's for certain causes, and some people buy tickets to support the organizations the tickets are being sold for, but we need to address our mind to this. We need to do some studies on it. We need to evaluate how severe the gambling problem is in the North and how much people are spending, how much of the disposable income people and families are spending on gambling. In how many instances is an addiction to gambling getting in the way of families having a normal life? If you are in the communities, I know bingo is a very popular game and we don't want to see these things outlawed, but it's time we talked about whether or not there is a percentage of the population that are foregoing all their family income on bingo.
I worked at a bingo in Yellowknife once and I was so disheartened by what I saw, I swore that I would never step foot back into the bingo hall. I don't care what good cause it was, I could not tolerate seeing so many people giving up so much money and it was way beyond recreation. I could not believe how much money they were dropping and I thought I was making a good income. If I was to drop $400 to $500 a night on a bingo, there is no way I could afford anything. The people I saw doing it I knew weren't making that much more money than me.
I don't know if so much bingo going on in all communities, including Yellowknife...