REMOVING VLTS OPENS DOORS TO DRUG DEALERS: BAR OWNERS

Group Says Organized Crime Stepping Forward With Offers To Make Up For Lost
Revenue

Facing the prospect of losing their lucrative video lottery terminals,
Quebec bar owners are being tempted by alternative sources of revenue
- - like a cut from drug deals on the premises.

So says a group representing 702 bar owners targeted by the provincial
government's plan to move 1,500 VLTs to racetracks, starting in November.

Luc Tousignant, director of the Detaillants d'appareils de loterie
video du Quebec, who also owns a bar in Trois Rivieres, says members
of organized crime have also approached him about buying his business
outright. So far, he has refused.

"In front of all my clients, he said: 'You'll see, your business won't
be worth anything - you'll be on your knees begging to sell your bar,'
" Tousignant recalled yesterday of one offer.

"And he's right. Without the VLTs, I won't be able to compete with the
other bars. The government is pushing me into the hands of organized
crime."

The bar owners have been up in arms since the government announced
plans in May 2004 to remove VLTs from bars that had fewer than five of
the devices, most of which are in small towns across the province.

They met with former finance minister Yves Seguin, who stood fast to
his plan, saying it would help reduce the problem of gambling
addiction by making VLTs less accessible.

A recent report by psychologist Jean Leblond revealed Quebecers lose
more than $1 billion a year on VLTs, and that 60 per cent of profits
come from pathological gamblers.

Now that a new finance minister, Michel Audet, is in charge, and the
government has announced plans to sell the racetracks to private
interests, the bar owners are back on the offensive.

Yesterday, they sent a lawyer's letter to Audet, calling the plan
discriminatory against owners of small bars, and asking for a meeting
with him.

If the government does not change its plan, the bar owners will
request a court injunction against the removal of the VLTs, lawyer
Yves Pepin said.

And if that doesn't work, they will launch a lawsuit worth five years
of lost revenues from VLTs, each of which is worth $10,000 to $25,000
a year.

"For the bar owners, the revenues from VLTs may be 15 to 22 per cent
of all their revenues," Pepin said. "It doesn't seem like much, but
they make the difference between profit and bankruptcy."

Perhaps the bar owners' most powerful weapon, however, is the threat
of bringing organized crime and drugs back into bars, after so much
effort by provincial and municipal police forces to eradicate them.

Tousignant has been a participant in such police programs, but with
the possibility of losing his house along with his bar - and drug
dealers offering $2,000 to $4,000 a month to share the profitable turf
- - he says he might reconsider.

"It's good to have principles," he said, "but not if it costs me my
livelihood and my house."