Gambling on its expertise: Sault lobbies to remain gaming headquarters.

• Author: Kelly, Lindsay
• Position: SAULT STE. MARIE

Sault Ste. Marie is undertaking a four-part strategy to position the city as the province's centre of lottery and gaming.

Ontario Lottery and Gaming (OLG) has been headquartered in Sault Ste. Marie since the 1980s when the province endowed each of the North's major cities with a government office as an antidote to the dip in resource-based industries.

But recent decisions have prompted the province to consider an adjustment to the current configuration. The 2012 Drummond Report, which offered recommendations on how to reduce Ontario's debt, suggested it was wasteful to have two head offices for Ontario Lottery and Gaining and one should be eliminated.

"We want the provincial government to demonstrate in action what they've stated in words, and that is the fact that we're the headquarters for Ontario Lottery and Gaming," said Tom Dodds, executive director of the city's Economic Development Corp.

It's a challenge, he noted, because over time, the city has seen a leakage of expertise to Toronto, including the majority of OLG executives and employees, Dodds said.

As part of the modernization of the industry lottery and gaming throughout Ontario will soon be operated by a private service provider. Dodds said the Sault is eager to show that private industry can benefit from centring their operations in the city.

"If this is the direction they're going to go for modernization, then what we're going to show is that we're the best place to locate your lottery operations as a head office, because we have the expertise of the guys that have been doing it for years," Dodds said.

The EDC and the city have developed a business case demonstrating the benefits to setting up there, and they're working with provincial representatives to plead their case. A website has been set up to extol the city's virtues to any prospective business interests.

Any loss of jobs to southern Ontario could have a critical impact on the Sault, since it would be followed by an outmigration of highly qualified individual people who have technical expertise and would have to relocate to find work if the Sault office were eliminated, Dodds said.

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"The industry is not that big, but it's high stakes for us," he said.

A request for proposals has already been for issued for service providers interested in securing the bundle for casinos in southern Ontario. Dodds anticipates a similar RFP will be issued for the Northern Ontario bundle in the new year. He wants any...