Recent success at the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corp. is translating into a significant number of new jobs coming to Sault Ste. Marie, officials announced this week. In addition to news that the city’s share of gaming revenue was $1.8 million, Mayor Matthew Shoemaker announced details Aug. 12 of the OLG’s plan to hire more people in the city. “Over the next three years, they will hire 150 people in Sault Ste. Marie -- 50 each year over that period,” Shoemaker said. “These are high-quality, high-paying jobs,” added Duncan Hannay, OLG president and CEO. “They could be in product management, they could be in operations, they could be in functional areas like HR (or they) could be in client support.” Office space at the Roberta Bondar Place is already filling up, with 39 of this year’s 50 new hires already on the job. Hannay said the news is something they heard consistently requested by the Shoemaker, both to the company and the province. The mayor said it makes sense for everyone for the Sault office to grow. More cost-effective “It’s more cost-effective for OLG to host people in a building that they already own, that the province already owns, that they don’t pay rent (and) that they retain their employees longer here,” he said. “On average, the cost of living is more affordable for their employees and that the economic benefit to the province is seven times greater than for an employee in southern Ontario.” Doug Downey, the interim provincial minister of Tourism, Culture and Gaming, said Shoemaker has a strong argument. “The mayor has been very persistent about it over time, but for good reason,” Downey said. “The impact of 150 jobs in Sault Ste. Marie cascades through families and kids in the community. The economics -- it’s just a really important thing to do.” OLG has 1,400 employees total, with 500 in the Sault. Officials said the new hires represent a 12-per cent increase and came as a result of significant growth in the last few years. “We have a couple of key initiatives that we will be funding,” Hannay said. “One of them is our tech stack transformation of our lottery technology right here in Sault Ste. Marie, where our data centre is located.” Shoemaker said he is already looking beyond the 150 jobs pledged by OLG, aiming to exceed those figures in the next three years. He adds his ultimate goal is to move all OLG jobs to the company’s headquarters in the Sault.
