Pressing Its Luck: How Ontario Lottery and Gaming Can Work For, Not Against, Low-Income Households

Abstract

In this paper, we tell the story of Ontario’s involvement with gambling and explore how it got hooked. The state has not always been the leading dealer in gambling or user of the revenue it produces. In fact, gaming’s path from an illegal and suppressed activity to a legal one, and its eventual transmogrification into a lean, mean, revenue machine having the government’s full support and encouragement, was circuitous and filled with ironies and unintended consequences.