| Commentary |
| In British Columbia, the Ombudsman has recently released a report with respect to the BC Lottery Corporation. The findings suggest some suspicious winning percentages attributable to some BC Lottery retailers, and other investigative outcomes which also point to a system of abuse or alternatively, a lack of coherent security, where fraud is easily achievable. |
| The current BC Solicitor General, John Les suggested in late December 2006 in "Actions Resulting from Review of BC Lottery Corporation Retailer Procedures" through his Assistant Deputy Minister Derek Sturko (December 14, 2006), that the BC Gaming Policy and Enforcement Branch and BCLC "must report to GPEB, all issues of real or suspected wrongdoing involving lottery retailers and their employers in accordance with Section 86 of the Gaming Control Act." |
| Mr. Prime Minister, the reported marginal recommendations were made available to the Solicitor General of BC five (5) months ago. |
| As you can see, the disparity between the recent Ombudsman's findings initiated from an investigation into the "fairness" of the lottery process commenced December 18, 2006 and the outcomes of findings from GPEB are very significant indeed. |
| As you are aware, the Solicitor General of BC is responsible for public safety and to this extent has oversight with respect to the RCMP. What can we expect of public confidence if the Ministry with the most investigative tools comes up drastically short relative to another investigation whose directives and authority are summarily 'watered down' to the extent of "fairness"? Any reasonable person can see what has been concocted here by government. They want to show that something has been done, they also don't want to be responsible for something seriously being done, about a very serious problem under the purview of the Ministry responsible for Public Safety. |
| I would now like to direct your attention to the matter of sale of overseas lottery tickets by a BC company known as Telco Management in Vancouver, British Columbia. |
| This company has been operating in a 'grey area' of legality for many years now. It is a business which has $100,000,000 in sales per annum, mostly to countries overseas, and most of these countries belonging to our G8 group of nations. The United States and particularly California banned the sale of these overseas lottery tickets and fined the company significantly. |
| From November 2006 until February 2007, I personally attended to a job posting by this company and sold lottery tickets in Britain. Telco's managment informed me with some glee that Britain does not have a DO NOT CALL LIST of any merit, no dissimilar to the current policy in place for telemarketers in Canada. |
| My experience at Telco strongly indicates to me that Britons particularly British senior citizens are being defrauded through guile and aggressive telemarketing techniques, millions of dollars of foreign lottery tickets. I personally investigated dozens if not hundreds of customer histories (age, address, etc.), wherein a new client might be sold foreign lottery tickets (which they cannot purchase in the jurisdiction they reside) 20 to 40 Canadian dollars. This enables new 'recruits' to obtain credit or debit card information from these individuals. |
| Once the new sales people are able to establish some trust with the overseas customer, their account (few new people stay on with the company)is then transferred to professional telemarkets known as "dynamiters" who are trained to sell $500 to $1,500 and more of lottery tickets at one time. Sales people are paid a commission and incentives to achieve these objectives for the company. The number of individuals in Britain being sold these lottery tickets (and never actually physically receiving their tickets purchased) who are 70 and 80 years of age is staggering. The number who are on pensions or disabilities is sufficient to make any person with feelings want to cry. It is enough to make any citizen of any democratic country outraged. |
| A similar practice is occuring in Germany, France, Australia etc. |
| The owner of this company and the related parent "Western" is a donor to the BC Liberal Party. The physical offices of the company are next to a Vancouver Police station. British Parliamentarians have been complaining about the actions of this company and the harm to its citizens for many years now. |
| Mr. Prime Minister, clearly there is something substantially wrong here, even the BC Liberal Solicitor General is working overtime to gloss over the problems relating to the BC Lottery Corporation which has authority over these foreign lottery ticket sales. |
| The question which needs to be asked is given the problems we are aware of, becoming aware of, and will probably become even more aware of in future days and weeks, and given our experiences as we are beginnning to understand them with Air India, and given the reluctance of our provincial government to properly pursue obvious crimes against the citizens, what possible confidence can we have in our security for the 2010 Olympic Games which will entail a far more sophisticated system of security and oversight, particularly with our continued foreing policy abroad? |
| The BC Liberal government suggests $100 odd million dollars for this exercise plus the remainder without explanation being transferred to the federal government, while Turin, Italy was known to be one billion. |
| These recent events with the BC provincial Ministry which HAS a relationship to the RCMP, which HAS exhibited some level of conflict in past relationships (BC Rail Trial) with our countries police agency, and which HAS shown from the evidence provided in my letter herein, an inability to evenly remotely deal with consumer fraud in lottery ticket sales both here and abroad, must provide a least of spark of concern with respect to its ability to properly assess the needs of public safety in terms of hosting of worldwide event such as the 2010 Olympics. |
| I would ask therefore on behalf of the citizens of British Columbia, that your good office undertake to initiate an independent RCMP investigation of the aforementioned lottery ticket sales circumstances for the expressed purposes of providing the public with confidence in its government institutions. |
| This confidence must thereafter be carried forward to include a comprehensive plan for security for everyone who will be attending the 2010 Vancouver Olympics Games, including Canadian citizens. |
| Sincerely, |
| Glen P. Robbins |
