The Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation (OLG) has made gaming revenue payments to the Township of Leeds and the Thousand Islands and Town of Gananoque.
Each received a payment of $296,468 for hosting Shorelines Casino Thousand Islands.
The payment is for the first quarter of 2022-2023, from April 1 to June 30.
This payment remains low, when considering the money coming in during the days before the pandemic, but that has become the norm during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Gananoque Mayor Ted Lojko acknowledged this, but said he’s happy that the casino is, “up and running, finally.”
“And luckily, they have managed to start rebuilding their commitment to Gananoque and the (Township of Leeds and) the Thousand Islands, and Leeds and Grenville, to pay for their property taxes and operational costs,” Lojko said.
Since the gaming site opened in June 2002, the Township of Leeds and the Thousand Islands and the Town of Gananoque have each received $30,753,741.
“The casino is an anchor for Gananoque and the Thousand Islands area,” Lojko said. “Aside from the casino aspect, from an employment side of it as well, there’s a lot of jobs that rely on the casino in the area, and I’m happy people are back to work.”
Leeds and the Thousand Islands Mayor Corinna Smith-Gatcke had not responded to a request for comment when this article was published.
According to the OLG, these payments to host communities are based on a formula consistently applied across all gaming sites in Ontario using a graduated scale of gaming revenue at the hosted site.
And in the past seven years, service providers have invested an estimated $1.8 billion in private sector capital development across the province, OLG stated in a news release. Since 2017, these investments have led to the development and opening of six new casinos, with two more currently under construction. In addition, a number of existing casinos have been enhanced and/or expanded.
Since 1994, host communities have received more than $1.86 billion in non-tax gaming revenue.
(Keith Dempsey is a Local Journalism Initiative reporter who works out of the Brockville Recorder and Times. The Local Journalism Initiative is funded by the Government of Canada.)
