The pandemic has pushed many people towards online gambling. Trustees are now observing this sad reality: players find themselves in financial difficulty and must make a proposal to their creditors, or even declare bankruptcy.
It cannot be concluded that gambling has bankrupted these people, but trustees who look at their clients’ expenses more regularly note gambling-related expenses.
“You see it in the bank statements when you do the full financial assessment. We see a lot of online gambling. Gigadat, Loto-Québec…”, says Sophie Desautels, licensed insolvency trustee at Raymond Chabot, a subsidiary of Raymond Chabot Grant Thornton.
“We see a lot of people in our offices, of all ages, who are more inclined to gamble,” she continues, noting that there are more young people caught with gambling debts than before.
According to Sophie Desautels, the ease of online gambling, with the proliferation of small expenses of a few dollars, promotes the loss of control.
“Gambling is not forbidden, she continues, but you have to realize that with a limited budget and obligations each month, if you want to play the lottery, it is better to allocate a small portion of the budget. for that. »
The catch is that gambling is not an expense like any other for some people who lose control.
Jean-François Biron, gambling specialist at the Direction régionale de santé publique de Montréal, explains that rationality changes when it comes to gambling.
You can have the best intentions in the world when you make your budget with your Excel file, but forget all that in the euphoria of the moment, whether you are at the casino or at home in a virtual environment.
Jean-François Biron has just delivered the study The new normality of online gambling in Montreal. We learn that 65,000 Montrealers started gambling during the first year of the pandemic and that 27% of these players believe they spend too much time or spend too much money in games of chance.
Pierre Fortin, president of Jean Fortin, financial reorganization, confirms that online gambling has changed the game. First, he initiated people who wouldn’t have gone to the casino or been tempted by slot machines in the back of a bar.
“It’s trouble going out to the casino or the bars,” he said. And you are seen. The anonymous side of online gambling is what is most serious, in my opinion. By being isolated, he says, online gamers escape most public health advisories that could halt a destructive streak.
According to Jean-François Biron, among the people who will have financial problems related to gambling, a large proportion do not have addiction problems. They will lose control occasionally. These losses of control can nevertheless be very expensive.
For this, he specifies, public health professionals would like Quebec to impose limits on possible losses, as is the case in other markets. “Players can lose up to $10,000 in a week,” says Jean-François Biron. In a single day, on the Loto-Québec site. And on the other sites, there is no limit. »
According to a Statistics Canada study published in 2022, people living in lower income households gamble less, but are more likely to develop gambling-related problems if they do.
Gambling and bankruptcy are both stricken with stigma, which makes the combination particularly painful.
“People come to my office and tell me that no one knows about it,” says syndic Sophie Desautels, who believes that players wait too long before seeking help to find solutions to their debt problems. .
The loss of control in the game comes with a very negative image. If, in addition, it leads to bankruptcy, the shame is doubled, confirms Sylvia Kairouz, holder of the Research Chair in the Study of Gambling at Concordia University.
“Already, we have a special relationship with money,” she said. A legacy of our Judeo-Christian culture. The idea in our society is that we have to work hard to earn our money. The game is literally the opposite. It is making money that is not deserved. »
Moreover, few people appear before the trustee admitting that it is the game that leads them there, explains Pierre Fortin.
However, online gambling leaves traces. Unlike the slot machine or even the casino, where players use cash, in the case of online gambling, professionals see the expenses of their customers go bankrupt.
Even then, says Pierre Fortin, there is a lot of denial. “We’re told it was just for fun,” he said. That’s no problem! »
Advisors sometimes find themselves directing their clients to resources that could help them, if they so choose.
Sylvia Kairouz points out that gambling is often an anonymous problem, unlike other addictions whose effects are obvious and recognized by loved ones.
“Players can literally mortgage the house, empty the accounts without them realizing it. This insidious aspect of the game causes problems to set in, get worse, and when it’s exposed in the light of day, it’s like an explosion. »
Clients confide in their trustee, in the tranquility of his office, that they continued to gamble because they believed that luck would change.
Public health specialist Jean-François Biron explains that this is a very common behavior.
And that leads to a $50 gain that will have cost $500, he says.
“You can win in a short period of time, but the more you play, the more the stats work against you. Players get caught up in their cognitive biases because they may have already gone beyond what they expected, but they remember that at some point they won, so they tell themselves they’re going to win just to arrive. And then they will stop. »
But that moment does not come.
