May 10, 2012
The largest breeder of harness racing horses in North America — and likely the world — said the cancellation of Ontario’s slots-at-racetracks program is like being halfway to your destination when the engineer purposely derails the train.
“Why even get on the damn train if that’s the case? I would not have,” Joe Thomson said Wednesday.
Thomson owns Winbak Farm, a horse breeding empire with operations in Maryland, New York, Delaware and, yes, Ontario. Winbak’s Canadian operation stands 11 multimillion-dollar stallions and produces nearly 200 Ontario-bred foals a year.
Thomson lives in Pennsylvania and is also the founder and president of Pacer Financial, an independent financial wholesaling firm.
His love of harness racing has led him to pour millions of dollars into Ontario’s economy precisely because of the slots-at-racetracks program and the success of the Ontario Sires Stakes which receives about half of its funding from slot revenue.
Now, that’s all threatened by the Liberal government’s decision to cancel the slots-at-racetracks program as of next March 31.
Thomson is one of hundreds of wealthy U.S. investors in Ontario’s horse racing sector struggling for answers.
“I just can’t imagine blowing it up,” Thomson said. “I don’t know how it is (in Ontario), but we have governors here that go overseas to try to stimulate business. Why would they blow up the ones they have? The first rule of running your own business is try to maintain the status quo. Try to save your existing customers and then go find new customers. But, don’t go find new customers at the expense of your old customers.”
More confounding to Thomson is the fact the province set up a successful framework in the first place that stimulated the economy and put over a $1 billion into taxpayer coffers every year just from slots revenue.
“We’ve got a terrific investment involved and the (Ontario) government did something very much like Bernie Madoff. They put the framework in place and then they pulled the rug out from under you and changed the deal midstream without giving people a chance to get their investments back,” Thomson said. “Not very nice.”
It’s also a signal that Ontario is not open for business.
Thomson said he’s further baffled because, in a little over a decade, the slots and the sires stakes have made the Ontario standardbred the best in the world.
“Good Lord, when Ontario’s No. 1 and the politicians don’t understand that what they created has been very successful, that’s sad,” Thomson said.
“It’s a great program. What really should concern us all is when you elect government officials and the program works as it was designed — to bring in and stimulate farm operations, horse operations. When you have racehorses that are making money and people are making money, all that trickles down to other breeds, other farm animals, other everything. Then, for them to have it doing so well and then suddenly change everything to kill it, it makes me wonder where they come from.
“The world has transitioned into people who are in politics that really don’t understand a lot. The funny thing is, when you see people go into politics and then 15 years later they come out millionaires. You begin to wonder, ‘What’s wrong with this picture?’ ”
Thomson said preserving farmland is also a must for our future.
“Ontario has great farms,” he said. “(Horse racing) keeps them alive. But you go 20, 30 years out and you’re going to find out that one of the biggest problems in the world is going to be food. This keeps it in farmland. If it’s not in farmland, then it’s going to turn into houses or development or something else. That’s not what you want your best farmland to do.”
He said his farms only have one crop — horses. They buy everything else locally which further stimulates the economy.
He said he has no idea what the future holds for horse racing in Ontario.
“Hopefully, we will, somehow, turn the tide on this thing,” Thomson said.
Dave Briggs is the publisher and editor of The Canadian Sportsman, the oldest harness racing magazine in North America. He can be reached by email at dbriggs@canadiansportsman.ca
