UNPUBLISHED LETTER

Dear Editor,

I am concerned about the decision of the Admissions Department of McGill University (Gazette July 28/10) to remove the MCAT from their standardized admission test to McGill’s Medical School.. At present, almost all Canadian and U.S medical schools require applicants to submit MCAT scores. According to Dr. Saleem Razack, Assistant Dean of Admissions, Quebec would have kept the MCAT if there were a French equivalent of the test. He furthermore claims he had met with MCAT representatives about the possibility of translating the exam into French, but found “it was too complicated”.
That brings into play the question of how solid is a widely-used, highly respected test that cannot be translated? This is a test that has been considered the ‘gold standard’ of testing for admission to Medical Schools across Canada and much of the United States. Harvard University Medical School requires applicants to pass the test. In Canada, two-thirds of our universities use the MCAT. Among the universities who do not use it, we count Universite de Montreal, Laval University and UQAM. If McGill abandons this exam, we are also making the entrance for less qualified anglophones easier. This will nullify the intended benefit to many of the francophones it was intended to help.
The Faculty of Medicine is not a faculty where the quality of graduates is variable. These are the future surgeons who may be operating on us, our children and our grandchildren. In my opinion, this proposal by the Admissions Department clearly means that we are “dumbing down” the level of education in order to attract more francophones to the programme, regardless of what the consequences may be.

Respectfully submitted,

Sol Boxenbaum
Talk show host
Commentator

July 23, 2010 – 9:51 am

The much-ballyhooed B.C. government gambling website, which cost the provincial government $7.3 million dollars in the hope it would increase gambling revenue by $100 million for the province, failed spectacularly within the first week.

According to media reports, PlayNow.com was shut down within hours of launching when overwhelmed by traffic. This was followed up by a privacy breach on Tuesday, with 134 accounts being compromised.

Worse than privacy concerns, it is alleged that a number of users managed to gamble on the site using other users’ money. Failure quite simply doesn’t get more spectacular than that.

The government is still hoping to go ahead with the website, but has vowed to recover the money from the website contractor if they are unable to deliver a working version.

What’s most worrisome is that the government appears to have been doing damage control by lying about the true nature of the crash. Allowing the public to believe it was server capacity, rather than a security breach, goes again to the inability of Premier Gordon Campbell’s government to tell the truth when faced with a crisis.

As Michael Smyth points out in the Province, the man responsible for promoting the website is the same man responsible for policing problem gambling in British Columbia. While Rich Coleman insists the problems are not as great as reported, one can’t help but think of the expression “the fox guarding the hen house.”

As I intimated in my radio interview about this topic last week, I was concerned about a provincial online gambling site that claimed to be able to keep the good guys in, and the bad guys out. Protecting the personal information of British Columbians, keeping track of users’ money, and trying to keep global hackers at bay, is a tall order to fill. Too tall for Campbell’s government, apparently.

The jury is still out on whether it’s ethical to simultaneously lecture on the ills of problem gambling, while providing an online service that is likely to draw in those same gamblers. It is altogether more worrying when the government makes clear it can’t run a website that protects the privacy of its users and security against abuse.

Let’s face it. The B.C. Liberals have abandoned any pretense of ethics in their scramble for cash, no matter the social or financial cost to others.

National Post

Adrian MacNair is a Vancouver writer and blogger. Read more here.

Posted on Wed, Jun. 23, 2010

More on the human costs of legal gambling

By Monica Yant Kinney

Inquirer Columnist

The bad dad who left his toddler in the car while he gambled at Parx Casino in Bensalem last week wasn’t the first and won’t be the last. Politicians and gaming execs hate talking about the social costs of casinos on every corner, but clearly we’re already paying – even before Philadelphia gets dragged into this losing game.

You’ve heard about the Jenkintown tax man who fed his slots addiction with other people’s money. But would you believe me if I told you that earlier this month two men – one homeless – got arrested for attacking slot machines?

One woman who blew her mortgage money reported a fake robbery to cover her trail. Others retaliate by phoning in bogus bomb threats, hoping that, for once, the house might lose a few bucks.

“Six months from now, these stories won’t be newsworthy,” declares addict-turned-healer C.P. Mirarchi. “They’ll be the norm.”

Depravity, says Mirarchi – www.thegamblingcounselor.com – follows geography: “The closer the casino, the sicker the gamblers.”

Necessary precautions

If Bensalem police officers were horrified to find a howling 15-month-old strapped in his car seat inside a parked Nissan sedan outside Parx, imagine their shock upon meeting the boy’s father, Donald Waige.

“He was pretty nonchalant when we saw him coming out of the casino,” recalls Sgt. Andrew Aninsman.

Waige said he left his sleeping son for just a moment to cash a $10 casino credit. The 59-year-old Feltonville man seemed surprised that his “moment” lasted more than an hour.

“Once he realized how long he was gone, he still didn’t really think it was that big a deal,” the officer marvels. “He felt he had taken the necessary precautions. He left the car running with the air on and locked the door. He changed the baby’s diaper.”

Pennsylvania’s Uniform Crime Reporting System doesn’t have a category for “risking your kid’s life for a long-shot jackpot,” but it does contain telling data about the seamy side of all this government-sanctioned family fun.

Last year, state troopers stationed inside the commonwealth’s nine casinos made 292 theft arrests and charged 142 people with disorderly conduct and 69 with assault. In the first five months of 2010, they have already charged 215 with theft and busted 76 for disorderly conduct and 35 for assault.

Losers ‘R’ Us

Trooper Randy Testa recently nabbed two knuckleheads – a 27-year-old from Philly and a 46-year-old homeless man – for punching slot machines.

“One of the guys actually hit it hard enough that his fist went through the glass and got all cut up,” Testa tells me. “Both machines sustained damage.”

As I gasp, Testa says he’s investigated “at least six” man-vs.-metal cases in three years
of casino duty. Drunk, disgusted regulars have also fought, stripped, and urinated on the gaming floor. Some enraged players pull fire alarms.

“Why?” I ask. Revenge, he says. “They’re frustrated at the casino for taking their money and not giving them anything.”

The woman who gambled away her house payment and lied about being robbed was arrested. Other sad souls have been involuntarily committed after too many spins.

“The psychological aspect of working here is different than being out on patrol,” Testa explains. “People come voluntarily with their life savings. When they lose, it drives them nuts.”

He says when because losing is a certainty – one that Gov. Rendell and fellow pro-gambling pols choose to ignore. For their own edification, perhaps every legislator should spend a week inside a casino to see what Trooper Testa sees.

“When you put money into fun, it’s never really fun unless you’re winning,” he’s learned. “Most people lose and keep digging themselves deeper and deeper. They don’t know when to quit.”

French National Assembly has passed a bill to legalise online gambling.

4/6/10 – Despite determined left wing political resistance, the French National Assembly has passed a bill to legalise online gambling and open up the French market to international operators. VIRTUAL POKER MACHINES AND GAMES OF CHANCE ARE NOT INCLUDED IN THE LAW BECAUSE THEY ARE CONSIDERED TOO ADDICTIVE TO BE LEGALISED.

On Tuesday the National Assembly passed the bill, which provides for regulation in a frame work described by observers as the strictest in Europe, reports the publication France24. The law had already successfully passed through the French Senate earlier this year (see previous InfoPowa reports) and is now expected to become law well in advance of the World Cup football championships, which take place in South Africa mid June to mid July.

Budget Minister François Baroin said: “This law will allow us to gradually purify the black market of online gaming by creating a legal alternative”, adding that the legislation would enable authorities to put an end to what he described as the “wild and anarchistic” development of Internet gambling.

Left wing opposition parties vigorously but unsuccessfully fought the law over a week of fierce debate and gave notice that they may take the issue to the Constitutional Court. “We have never examined a bill under such obvious and intense pressure from lobbies expecting a new law to satisfy their financial interests”, Socialist spokesman Gaëtan Gorce said.

The bill will be followed by a set of decrees which, once signed by the Minister, effectively brings the law into force. It is expected that the decrees will be signed next (May) month. ARJEL, the regulator in France, has already posted the requirements for an applying operator on its web site.

The decrees, which have remained confidential, were sent to the Commission earlier this year and the European Commission reply is expected at the end of this (April) month.

Associated Press reported that the online gambling sector generated nearly Euros 800 million in France in 2008, and will likely draw a variety of players – online bet organisers, sports clubs, and advertisers – to compete with state monopolies PMU and La Française Des jeux if they are successful in obtaining licenses from regulator ARJEL.

In related news, the UK-based trade association representing online gambling companies, the Remote Gambling Association, criticised the new law, saying that it does little to truly facilitate a competitive and thriving market and that ultimately the burden will fall squarely on the shoulders of French players.

The RGA repeated its call for the draft law to be amended to bring it into compliance with EU rules.

“Even if the European Commission, as guardian of the Treaties, feels that a licensing system is sufficient to satisfy EU rules, the French law makes a mockery of a supposed “controlled opening”, said Clive Hawkswood, chief executive of the RGA. “Whether it is the hundred plus pages of technical rules, the false limitation on payouts to players, the ineffective blocking mechanisms or the introduction of an unsubstantiated sports right, this system is, unfortunately, seriously flawed and will make it difficult for any private sector company to be successful, especially in the area of sports betting”.

“While we have no access to the decrees which will define the secondary regulation of this sector, we are fearful that they will simply extrapolate the mechanisms in the primary law into more onerous detail,” said Hawkswood. “The technical standards document has heightened these fears with technical issues which raise serious considerations as to the feasibility of the frontal server system. But the greatest fears are reserved for those areas which are nothing more than a smokescreen to protect the incumbent providers.”

The RGA has received legal advice on the bill and remains committed to seeking all avenues of redress if the bill and its subsequent regulations appear to deny market opportunities to private operators, Hawkswood added.

“Our biggest concern is that this type of system is accepted by courts and the EU institutions as somehow a fair access system. It looks nothing like the Italian system for instance and runs roughshod over EU rules meant to provide operators access to EU markets. We hope the new Commissioner who oversees this dossier will continue to scrutinise this law and its negative effects on market access.”

I personally think that the number is underestimated. A Loto-Quebec spokesperson said that 1 in 10 Quebecers played a VLT during the year 2000. That would equate to 700 000 people based on an adult population of 7 million. A study done by Montreal Public Health found that 43% of VLT players were problematic. That would indicate 300 000 gamblers adversely affected by VLTs in Quebec.

Notwithstanding, the class action suit is asking for the following minimum amounts to allow VLT victims to seek treatment for gambling dependency:

In addition the suit asks for exemplary damages of $1 000 per person ($119 000 000) to create a Foundation which would fund research, prevention programs and treatment for gamblers who become dependent on VLTs.

Canadian Broadcasting Corporation