A proposed “mini-casino” project at the Bell Centre arena in Montreal facilitated by Groupe CH, owners of the Montreal Canadiens, and Loto-Québec is drawing fierce opposition from community groups and local officials in close proximity to the arena.
The proposed casino, if approved, would bring video lottery terminals (VLTs), sports betting and table games to a three-story building next to the Bell Centre that previously housed a tavern.
Those who oppose the project have pointed directly to a 2017 study from the Direction régionale de santé publique de Montréal (DRSP), the city’s public health department, that outlined certain “red zones,” or areas with high numbers of gaming machines along with large populations of vulnerable people.
Serge Sasseville, an independent city councilor, told the Montreal Gazette that the Bell Centre casino falls “right in the middle of these red zones,” in an area “where we already have a problem of violence and criminality, with street gangs, violence and drug trafficking, unhoused people and people who are vulnerable, with dependency problems. … I believe the last thing we need with all the problems we face is such a project.”
On March 20, several community groups penned an open letter to Premier François Legault, arguing that “installing 350 video lottery terminals in the heart of downtown Montreal would have disastrous consequences on the population, particularly in our Little Burgundy and Peter-McGill neighborhoods, which are part of the vulnerable zone identified by public health.”
The letter highlighted the potential increase in problem gaming the casino might bring, and pointed to a similar proposal from 2006 that was eventually scrapped due to similar concerns. “Why come back with such an idea 17 years later?” the groups posited.
Loto-Québec has said that the casino would be open from noon to 3 a.m., seven days a week. Representatives from the company recently met with Sasserville, and argued that it would remove machines from other nearby establishments to cut down on exposure.
However, Sasserville told the Gazette that he doesn’t like that plan; the machines won’t be as widespread, but “they will be all together in one place … in a zone where there are already too many of those machines and where there are already vulnerable people.”
The next step for the project would be to obtain approval from the DRSP, but department spokesman Danny Raymond told the Gazette that as of now, “no project has been submitted to the experts of the Direction régionale de santé publique (DRSP) de Montréal for analysis.”
Should the DPRS approve the project, it would then need zoning approval from the urban planning department, as the current bylaws would have to be modified.
