Angry in the Great White North

The Ontario Lottery Scandal is easily one of the most serious failings to have occurred ever in Ontario government history. Literally every person in Ontario is affected:

Ontario's opposition parties are keeping up the pressure for the resignation of David Caplan, the cabinet minister [in Premier Dalton McGuinty's Liberal government] responsible for the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation.

Caplan insists he knew nothing about lottery retailers being suspected of making dishonest claims for tens of millions of dollars in jackpot prizes until last October.

But Conservative Leader John Tory says there are e-mails showing Caplan's staff were informed six months earlier, and rejects Caplan's claims that he was not informed as "a joke."

Tory says if the minister truly knew nothing and saw nothing then people cannot have confidence in the lottery system as Caplan is in charge.

The fact is that, if private gambling operations were legal in Ontario, and if one had been caught stealing money from winners, the operation would have been shutdown and charges would be laid against the operators, even if the crimes had been committed by low-level contracted employees.

But I don't expect the government to vigourously prosecute itself. I could yell about how unfair that is, but why bother?

Instead, I'm going to offer a solution that is fair and provides the opportunity to punish the guilty.

The government contends that the guilty store owners are likely never to suffer consequences for their actions. Not true. Just take away their lotto terminals.

But to be fair, take them all away.

Make it clear that because the actions of a few have cast a shadow on the honesty of entire community, the only thing left to do is to remove the entire community from the system. Then tell vendors who would like to operate lottery terminals that they can re-apply for licenses.

We might get lucky and someone with some real evidence will spill the beans in order to get his precious license back, but I doubt it.

It wouldn't matter, because internally the re-vamped Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation, with the help of an outside auditor, will evaluate the applications using past data. Most vendors will find their lottery license returned in short order -- maybe only a few weeks interruption.

Others, though, will find themselves waiting a longer time as their suitability as a lottery vendor is re-evaluated.

And for the people of Ontario, the break from the lottery will be a good thing. A fair number might find that they don't really miss it all that much. Fine by me.

And hey, maybe the Ontario government will realize that there are other ways of raising funds or lowering costs -- but I doubt it.