By: Jim Taylor
The Ontario Lottery and Gaming corporation has
received some bad press lately—and it’s about time.
Earlier this year, the CBC’s Fifth Estate program found
that ticket sellers had won lottery prizes more than 200 times.
Based on analysis of the number
of retail outlets selling lottery tickets, Dr. Jeffrey Rosenthal, a
statistician with the
To put that in gambler’s terms,
Rosenthal said the probability was "about one chance in a trillion,
trillion, trillion, trillion. It’s just inconceivable
they’d be winning that many more times than we’d expect them to," he said.
The Fifth Estate’s revelations
spurred inquiries in other provinces. In Atlantic Canada, retailers were
roughly ten times more likely to win than an ordinary buyer.
That’s not a ten per cent
increase. Or 110 per cent of normal. Ten times means a
1000 per cent variation!
And it’s not just because
retailers buy more tickets. Indeed, retailers don’t need to buy a ticket at all
to win.
You hand over your ticket. The
vendor scans it. “Sorry,” she says, idly tossing your ticket into the
wastebasket. “Not a winner. Better luck next time.”
You leave. She retrieves the
ticket, fills in the blanks on the back, and collects your prize.
She already knows it’s a
winner. The machine told her so.
Accusations rampant
The revelations led to the firing of Lottery CEO
Duncan Brown. Only on the job since 2004, at an annual salary of
$354,000, he collected his own windfall jackpot—a $720,000 severance package.
They have "turned a blind
eye to allegations of crime for many years," Marin told reporters.
"Unscrupulous retailers,” he said, collected at least $100 million in
fraudulent claims since 1999, thanks in large part to a "hopelessly
conflicted" provincial agency that allowed the practice to persist.
Marissa Nelson of the
A Lottery spokesperson admitted
it considered the win “suspicious.” The Corporation delayed payment for more
than a year. It normally issues a press release identifying winners; in this
case, it didn’t. But it paid $12.5 million anyway.
To keep
things quiet.
Their motives seem clear—they
were afraid to crack down on retailers because if the public realized they were
being cheated, they would lose trust in the system and in the government that
runs it.
"Without the trust that
whoever has lady luck on their side will actually pocket the jackpot,
confidence in our lottery is shattered," Ombudsman Marin said.
Founded on falsehoods
But
why should anyone trust the process at all?
Think about it. The whole
premise of gambling—especially government-sponsored gambling—is to gain
something you didn’t earn. Winning a lottery requires no skills, no experience,
no investment, no effort…
Gambling targets the poor and
the desperate. You won’t see Conrad Black and Warren Buffet investing in
lottery tickets. The possibility of getting something for nothing appeals
mainly to those who have nothing—if nothing else, it gives them hope.
But it’s misplaced hope.
Your chances of winning a 6/49
jackpot are about 1 in 14 million—equal to your odds of dying within the next
15 minutes. The odds of getting a winning Super 7 ticket are four times
worse—one in 63 million.
But governments have become so
dependent on gambling revenues that they encourage people to throw their money
away. Government lotteries are among the biggest advertising accounts in any
province.
B.C. generates $2.36
billion dollars each year—$1.14 billion from casinos, $1 billion from
lotteries, $225 million from bingo. About 70 per cent of that goes to prize
payments, commissions, and operating expenses; the province keeps 30 per cent.
Governments claim that gambling
revenues support community organizations and programs. Yes, at least two
community organizations I belong to benefit from these grants.
But in fact, barely 20 per cent
of the B.C. government’s take finds its way to community organizations—about
six per cent of what gamblers spent.
That’s a lousy rate of
recovery.
Exploiting weakness
In 2001, premier Gordon
Campbell promised to “stop the expansion of gambling” in B.C.
Six years later, his government
has tripled the number of slot machines in the province, doubled its take from
gambling, and branched into Internet gambling.
And this is considered a
foundation for trust?
When governments exploit human
weakness to increase revenues, they should hardly be surprised if a few retailers
follow their example.
When I was a boy in Scouts, we
dutifully repeated each week, “On my honor, I promise….”
Honor was supposed to matter
above all else—it defined one’s reputation, one’s self-esteem, one’s
self-worth. A man’s word was as good as his bond, a handshake as good as a
written contract. A maiden was supposed to defend her honor—virginity if
single, fidelity if married—with her life if necessary.
But honor has become an alien
concept. I cannot recall having heard the word “honor” used on the radio, or in
television programs, for years.
The ideology of deregulation
presumes that “honor” still governs human behavior, to keep people honest.
Therefore meat packing plants will cull cattle for mad cow disease. Industries
will voluntarily control toxic wastes and greenhouse gases. Water officials
will shut down their own systems when they detect e-coli contamination;
Walkerton will never happen.
And, of course, lottery ticket
sellers will value their personal integrity higher than, say, $24 million.
Dream on!
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Copyright © 2007 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and study
groups permitted; all other rights reserved.
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