Comment
The wrong truck pulls up
Bruce Haire

The scandal over insiders at the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation winning seems to indicate two classes of people in Ontario.

On one side you have the people involved with OLG including the executives and politicians and on the other is the rest of us.

It is clear that there was a fraud taking place.

Winning tickets were being switched by retailers.

But it is also very clear that a massive coverup was taking place that could go right up to the top office in Ontario.

Not only does the scandal disappoint, but the way it has been handled also makes one even madder.

Only a news group with the resources of the CBC and The Fifth Estate could have broken this story, as it seemed that the OLG and the provincial government blocked them every step of the way.

CBC had to use the Freedom of Information Act to get data. There were even efforts to discredit its reporter working on the case.

It seems that store owners claimed over $100 million in winnings over $50,000 between 1999 and 2006 which according to CBC, the wins defied all the odds.

According to the initial responses from OLG, they were just "lucky".

Even locally we had retailers who were "lucky". One carried off a jackpot and his two brothers also won jackpots. Amazing, isn't it?

Meanwhile David Caplan, the minister in charge, is being charged publically and in the legislature with either being "incompetent" or "wilfully negligent". We don't think that Caplan is incompetent.

They would have us believe they weren't reading the newspapers when Bob Edmunds, 83, of Coboconk successfully sued the OLG for a retailer stealing his $250,000 winning ticket.

The Ombudsman investigating said OLG was ignoring the corruption.

Was the OLG duplicitous in keeping things quiet? It seems so. In one amazing case, a Burlington store manager's family received a $12.5 million jackpot and the OLG didn't even make a public announcement.

Doubtfully Caplan knew about the scandal as early as OLG but he knew by at least 2005 and it is hard to imagine he sat on this massive coverup without telling the Premier.

Who are the heroes in this case? Certainly The Fifth Estate and Bob Edmunds. How many 83-year-olds are willing to take on a government agency with unlimited resources in court?

Meanwhile the government is paying off OLG officials with fat severances that make the lottery wins look pale in comparison. It seems that we're bringing in the Brinks truck with the payoffs instead of a paddy wagon and arresting individuals for being party to a fraud over-up.