And the debacle continues in British Columbia. First, let me state my views here so that those are clear. I firmly support the right of adults to choose whether or not they wish to gamble. I also support the right of governments to regulate and even tax (yes, that’s an evil word), those online casinos that do business in their country. First, objective regulation benefits the players because they have some assurance that the site they are playing at is run fairly, even though the odds are of course always with the house. And since the government is taking on the step of regulating casinos and assuring fair play, yes, they should be able to gain some tax revenue out of the casinos.
But I become concerned when governments start running the casinos themselves. After all, it then becomes a process of casinos regulating themselves. And I don’t like the idea of the organization who people feel is protecting them and ensuring fair play actually being the same organization. It just leads to too many potential issues. And British Columbia has been proving this.
British Columbia started up Its own online casino with plans to make about $40 million annually from the site. Not from taxes but from the house edge on the games. But when the casino launched last week, it immediately experienced major problems with account information from players on the site being exposed to other players. Within a couple hours of opening the casino, the British Columbia Lottery Corp had to shut down the casino. Now the British Columbia Privacy Commissioner has stepped in to order that the site remain closed until the security problem is fixed.
Apparently experts are estimating that it may take months to ensure that the casino is ready to operate and the BC government doesn’t trust the BC Lottery Corporation to fix the problem without oversight. After all, the BCLC has already been fined $650,000 in penalties for persistent failure to report large money transactions.