Good point Sparky -greed has a tendency to blind common sense

In the US, amusement taxes can be levied by either state or local government, sometimes amusement games are lumped in with all coin machines (food vending, laundry, etc).  The amusement industry has lobbyists to "educate" government about the state of the industry and in many cases have been successful in repealing the taxes or reducing the license costs.  Major operators or distributors in Quebec should have had access to this in the 80's and 90's (not so much now as the lobbyists primarily work for the benifit of the gaming industry - thank WMS and IGT for that).
Quebec probably knew about the state of the industry - given that tax revenue from amusement licenses would have dropped severely over the last few years - perhaps they choose not to do anything about it as they would rather be rid of the arcades then throw them a lifeline.
...or perhaps as Mrhide suggested, they are just too busy counting casino money to care at all.

Quoted from necro_nemesis

Sounds like an interesting theme. I think I would like one of those.

Dave, you got one of those yet?

Well, If you ask my Wife, I do!!  

Dave

AS an aside, I have seen quite a number of Fruit Machines coming out of Quebec and they appear to all be made to operate only on credits.  My understanding is that they came from bars and clubs, and that like trade stimulators, they were said to entertain clients, but that the bar tenders exchanged things like cigarettes and booze for credit wins.  This is proported to be recent history.  Is this true?  Not sure what's happenign now that casinos abound, but all along there has been a Federal criminal law on the books prohibiting the ownership of any device which uses slot reels (the grey area is that they normally only prosecute if it is found they are being used for illegal gaming).  I wonder if Who?Dunnit owners are taking a risk?