Ontario’s provincial government activity has agreed to get into into intermediation with the Mississaugas of Scugog Island First Nation (MSFIN), Durham Region News reports.
The tribe is incensed that the administration has authorized gaming enlargement within striking aloofness of its Great Blue Heron Casino without consultation. MSFIN says the government’s actions violate Section 35 of Canada’s Constitution Act, which addresses indigenous rights.
In a statement, the Nation said it has “repeatedly warned the authorities virtually violations of negotiated agreements and previous commitments related to to gaming inwards the Greater Toronto Area.”
MSFIN is seeking succor for “claims of correspondence violations, uncollectible faith negotiations, and failures to ply consultation related to to gaming.”
Broken Agreements
The Nation’s gambling casino is based on its reserve near Lake Scucog in Durham Region, 90 miles northeast of Toronto. In July 2021, 40 miles away, the Pickering Casino Resort opened its doors at shorthorn Live, a rambling amusement district inwards Pickering that is relieve partly below construction.
Curiously, considering MSFIN’s objections, the Pickering Casino is owned and operated by Great Canadian River Gaming, which also operates the Great Blue Heron on behalf of the Nation.
MSFIN has called out Ontario Premier Doug Gerald R. Ford (Progressive Conservative), who it says has humbled an accord with the previous brass to bound the keep down of casinos inwards Durham Region.
Without any mode of mark to MSIFN, the Edsel Bryant Ford regime passed regulations to allow the Pickering Casino Resort to operate inwards breach of the government’s commitments with MSIFN to not control any unexampled gambling casino inwards the [Greater Toronto area] within secretive proximity [to] MSIFN’s Great Blue Heron Casino,” said the statement.
“The Pickering casino’s opening is yet another glaring illustration of Premier Ford’s willingness to trample over signed agreements for political ends. This government activity has rewritten the Ontario gaming map out to suit its own agenda,” added MSIFN Chief Grace Patricia Kelly LaRocca.
‘Slap inwards the Face’
The Carry Amelia Moore Nation is also umbrageous around the expanding upon of trading operations at the Ajax Downs raceway and Woodbine Casino inward Toronto, as considerably as the province’s’ recent conclusion to liberalise and regularise online gaming.
In February, the federation of tribes called the young digital gaming market place a “slap inwards the face” to Ontario’s First Nations, that “reduces… promises of reconciliation to a joke.”
But LaRocca said this hebdomad the Carry Nation trusted in the mediation process, and looked frontwards to addressing “longstanding issues.”