Quebec - After years of legal wrangling, the hearing of a potentially crippling class-action lawsuit against Loto-Quebec opened in Quebec City Monday with the testimony of a former journalist who squandered more than CAD 360,000 in video lottery terminals (VLTs). "Gambling was like a drug to me, it was all I could think of. It consumed me," explained Nelson Labrie, 69, who worked for the newspaper Le Soleil for over 25 years.

Quebec racehorse trainer Marc Camirand has a pointed but inspired suggestion for Loto-Québec. Now that the provincial gaming corporation has apparently found a cure for problem gambling with its self-designed "ludoplex" centres at the racetracks in Quebec City and Trois Rivières, Camirand says the socially responsible thing to do would be to also convert the Montreal Casino into a ludoplex.

oto-Quebec will open a new luxury casino in the popular resort town of Mont-Tremblant, Quebec, next year. It will cost $ 61 million to build and will create 175 jobs. It estimates there will be 700,000 visitors annually at the casino, which should generate revenues of CAD 50 million a year. The provincially owned lottery agency and the Quebec government announced Sunday that the province’s fourth casino should be operational in the Laurentian town, north of Montreal, by the summer of 2009.

Loto-Québec has quietly decided to keep the Casino du Lac-Leamy open 24 hours a day, seven days a week to "meet the needs of its clientele" and compete with other gambling outlets. Jean-Pierre Roy, a spokesman for the provincial agency that operates casinos in Gatineau, Montreal and Charlevoix, near Quebec City, said yesterday that, after 12 years and 40 million visitors, it was time to open Casino du Lac Leamy around the clock.