Small and medium-sized businesses are almost every business in Quebec. So why are they the last to be asked when the government changes the rules?
Quebec’s video lottery network wasn’t built in a boardroom. It was built in neighbourhood bars and restaurants, by owners who supplied the space, hired the staff, paid the bills and watched the machines, year after year, for decades.
Now Loto-Québec is pulling terminals out of those small, independent establishments and moving them into gaming halls it owns and operates itself. The owners who helped build the network found out by form letter. Nobody sat down with them.
Nobody asked what it would mean for their staff, their rent or their regulars. The decision was made, and they were told.
“The people who built this market together weren’t consulted. They were notified.”
The numbers aren’t close
According to Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada’s Key Small Business Statistics 2025, Quebec had 233,235 employer businesses at the end of 2024. Only 666 of them had 500 or more employees. Small and medium-sized businesses made up 99.7 percent of the total.
Across Canada, the same report finds that SMEs employ 63.6 percent of private-sector workers, about 8 million people, and generate nearly half of private-sector GDP. In accommodation and food services, the sector bars belong to, they account for 83.4 percent of jobs.
That isn’t a niche. That’s the economy.
Would they do this to a big corporation? Picture the government telling a multinational tobacco company that, a year from now, its products would only be sold in government-owned outlets. No consultation. No compensation. Just a date on a page. It’s hard to imagine, because big industries get meetings, committees and a seat at the table long before decisions like that are made.
Small operators get a letter signed by a sales director, telling them to call their “commercial representative” if they have questions.
Deep pockets, or a double standard?
So which is it? Does the government only really listen to corporations with the money to make themselves heard? Or does it assume the executive in the corner office understands business better than the owner who has run the same room for 40 years?
Neither answer is acceptable. A small-business owner makes payroll, manages risk, deals with suppliers and answers to customers every single day. That’s not less business sense than a corporate executive has. Often it’s more, because there’s no one else to absorb the mistakes.
“The government doesn’t hand authority to the people. The people hand authority to the government.”
Who gives government its power
Small and medium-sized business owners, their employees and their customers are the ones who elect the people making these decisions. That authority flows from them to government, not the other way around. They should have just as much say in the policies that shape their livelihoods as any corporate boardroom does.
And it’s worth remembering where the boardrooms came from. Every large corporation in Quebec started as a small business. Somebody took a risk, worked long hours and got a little lucky. Squeeze out the small operators today and you squeeze out the large employers of tomorrow.
A seat at the table
Quebec’s newly elected government has a chance to set a different tone: consult the small-business partners who helped build the VLT network before changing it, publish the standards being used to judge them, and treat the owners of 99.7 percent of Quebec’s businesses as partners rather than an afterthought.
“Small business is the heart of Quebec’s economy. It’s time the government started acting like it.”
85370 Canada Ltd 2335: Hymus Blvd., Dorval, QC H9P 1J8 | Family-run and licensed since 1981 Read the full open letter to Loto-Québec, available in English and French.
