 I'm Dr. Robert Williams, a professor in the Faculty of Health Sciences at the University of Lethbridge and also a research coordinator for the Alberta Gamlin Research Institute. I'm the principal investigator on a very large scale 10-member interdisciplinary and inter-university team, University of Lethbridge, Alberta and Calgary. Essentially the overarching goal of this study is to provide for the very first time a comprehensive understanding of gambling and problem gambling in Canada. This is a unique collaboration between the four major research entities that are involved in gambling research in Canada. One is the Alberta Gamlin Research Institute, the second is the Canadian Center for Substance Abuse and Addiction, third is the Canadian Consortium for Gamlin Research and fourth is Gamlin Research Exchange Ontario because they have a interest in this investigation and because the large-scale nature of the study they've all made financial contributions. So part of the inspiration for this study is the fact that there's been a couple of other jurisdictions, Australia with the Productivity Commission, the United States with National Gamling Impact Study. Now gambling is just as important, prominent, pervasive and problematic in Canada is it is there and we've never undertaken such an investigation and we hope to do something analogous to that. My name is Dr. Kerry Leonard. I am the project manager for this national study. I am responsible to ensure that the methodologies used for each of these sub-component studies is sound and that they meet ethical standards and then finally the report writing. I will be directly involved in three of the sub-projects. The first being the key informant surveys. We'll be actually surveying the opinions of regulators, provincial operators, problem gambling treatment administrators and casino owners to find out their opinions of the provision of gambling across Canada. The second sub-study that I'll be directly involved in is the casino patron surveys and we'll be surveying patrons of casinos across Canada to find out which responsible gambling tools they're actually using and how helpful they find these tools. The third project is a survey of individuals who are receiving treatment for problem gambling. What we'll be seeking to ascertain is what elements of treatment they've actually found useful and which elements of treatment they've found less helpful. There are 10 essential research objectives here. One is a comprehensive documentation of how gambling is provided in each province both historically and currently and Reece Stevens our librarians heading that initiative. Next is current prevalence of gambling and problem gambling in Canada. Stats Canada is administering 28,000 surveys to Canadians and this will update the prevalence rates that haven't been updated since 2002. Third is online gambling in Canada. The current provincial prevalence rates online gambling as a function of whether that province actually provides online gambling or not and the extent to which people are patronizing the provincial site as opposed to offshore. Next is Canadian attitudes towards gambling. Do they think it's too available, not available enough? Do they think more harm or good derives from it? So comprehensive assessment of attitudes. Low risk gambling guidelines. So the Canadian Centre is Substance Abuse and Dr. David Hodgson's are heading this but they're trying to develop an understanding of the level of gambling involvement that would preclude problems associated with gambling analogous to what we have for low risk drinking guidelines. Another is Indigenous gambling in Canada. Yale Belanger University Left Bridge is heading this aspect. He hopes to interview members of the Assembly of First Nations and other groups and use that conjunction with the thousand or so Indigenous gamblers will have our population surveys to better understand Indigenous gambling in Canada. Problem gambling. This will have over 2,000 problem gamblers from our various population surveys which is the largest sample of problem gamblers ever collected worldwide. It gives us the ability to do a fine grained analysis of the demographics and individual differences in problem gamblers. Etiology. What causes problem gambling? We're following 10,000 gamblers over a period of two years and we'll see what things cause problem gamblers to admit from problem gambling and what things cause gamblers to move into problem gambling. Responsible gambling is delivered differently in each province and Darren Christiansen and Fiona Nicholl are looking at provincial rates of problem gambling and gambling-related harm as it relates to the presence or absence of various responsible gambling initiatives in each province. And finally, the impact of cannabis legalization. Dan McGrath, University of Calgary is heading this. We're looking at the impact of cannabis legalization both on cannabis utilization and cannabis utilization as it relates to gambling. This is a landmark study. We're all very excited about it. And we're very thankful both the interest and financial contributions of our funders and recognizing this would not be possible without the expertise and talent of our very skilled multidisciplinary team.