The lottery industry up here is under scrutiny. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s investigative program, the fifth estate, has been peeking under the scratchoff tickets and following the money like good little journalists should. Here’s the link if you want to read more:
http://www.cbc.ca/fifth/luckofthedraw/index.html
the fifth estate found that the number of lottery sellers winning jackpots was significantly higher than the math said it should be. Canada has had government run legal lotteries since 1975 or so, when the first Canada Olympic Lottery was stood up. Designed to fund the 1976 Olympics in Montreal, governments across the country saw that there was a huge wad of money out there to be plucked.
We have the usual lottery games, pick 6 numbers out of 49, or pick 7 out of 49 and win even more. Plus four hundred and ninety seven different kinds of scratch-off type tickets. Each province runs their own versions, with various payouts from a free ticket to a zillion dollars a week for the rest of your life.
Since the lottery retailers were winning significantly more than the statistics would suggest, it pointed to a hole in the security somewhere. When Bob Edmonds of Fenelon Falls presented a winning lottery ticket to a retailer in July 2001 and was told it didn’t win, he knew something was curious. Even more curious, the retailers cashed the winning ticket as their own and scored $250,000.
The Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation, OLG, undertook an investigation, which was, at best rudimentary. Eventually it came out that the OLG security people knew something was fishy, but the senior folks didn’t want to look too closely, as the retailers are the front line in a Crown Corporation that grossed $5,854,055,000 in 2005. (That would be nearly $6 Billion for those you who can’t remember how many zeros are in a million)
If the retailers were examining the scratch and win tickets and figuring out which ones were the big winners, or jiggering the lottery terminals to not play the ‘winner’ music, then the happiness of the retailers was paramount and the security of the game becomes secondary. After all, we got us a $6 Billion dollar machine to feed!
Needless to say, the CEO of the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation has resigned, with his golden parachute intact. The Atlantic Lottery Corporation is investigating why so many of their retailers seem to have winning tickets. The other provincial lottery groups are starting to look inwards too. There is much trembling in the board rooms.
Some factoids here: The likelihood of winning a big prize in a 6/49 type of lottery is approximately 1 in 13,983,816. In a 7/49 type game, according to the OLG’s own stats is 1 in 20,963,833. You are more likely to have Sigourney Weaver and Kate Winslet show up unannounced at your front door with a bottle of Viagra, a case a Mazola oil and welcoming smiles, than win at any lottery.
There’s nothing wrong with the ‘dollar and a dream’ bit of recreation, once in a while, if you can afford it. Notice the qualifiers there, once in a while, if you can afford it. Unfortunately, lotteries have become a tax on stupidity and those who play the most, tend to be those who can’t afford to play. I’ve seen too many people of modest means, plunking down anywhere from $20 to $100 twice a week to play ‘their numbers’, hoping to hit it big.
Of course the lottery corporations have taken all kinds of stern voiced stances regarding problem gambling, but their actual efforts, aside from signing a high-toned Code of Conduct consists of, well, signing a high-toned Code of Conduct. OLG also says they have poured $113 million into "Problem Gambling" As best I can see, those efforts consist of signing a high-toned Code of Conduct and issuing media releases.
It will eventually out that the government-run lotteries are nothing more than voluntary taxation of the dumb and broke, while the proceeds are dumped into General Revenue and frittered away on studies about high-toned Codes of Conduct.
Spend your $2 and dream of telling the boss to pound sand, if you choose to and can afford to, but remember that you are willingly giving the government your after-tax money to piss it away on more studies of nothing, plus marketing more lotteries to more people.
Perhaps Sigourney and Kate will knock on the door first. I can always rent a trampoline.
RoadDave 