No need for criminal checks, lotto retailers say

Lottery ticket sellers are not impressed with a recommendation that they all undergo criminal background checks.

The recommendation is contained in a report by an independent panel in Nova Scotiaon how to prevent retailers from cheating the system.

Sid Chedrawe, with the Atlantic Convenience Store Association, said mandatory checks on all retailersare unnecessary.

"For someone to go to that extreme measure of getting criminal background checks, that makes the assumption that everybody in this business is a criminal and we just have to find out who they are and get rid of them," he said.

The Atlantic Lottery Corporation is considering the recommendation.

"It's part of a newer way of doing business, providing added security to all Atlantic Canadians, and we believe it's just part of enhancing our security for them and part of doing business," saidALC vice-presidentMike Randall, noting the system is already in use in British Columbia.

This could only happen if the alcohol and gaming division of Nova Scotia's Department of Environment and Labour shares some of the cost, he added.

The panel was set up by the Nova Scotia government after an investigation found that lottery ticket sellers won 10 times more often than statistically they should have over the last six years.

In a report released last week,the panel said the ALC has not done enough to protect ticket buyers in Nova Scotia from dishonest retailers who steal their winnings.

Randall said the ALC is already doing criminal background checks on every new lottery retailer and has implemented many other measures recommended in the report.

To Chedrawe, those precautions should be enoughto protect consumers.

"That would be more than enough to put confidence back in the game so when a customer buys a ticket, they are buying it fully confident that if they win something, no one's going to cheat them out of a penny, a dollar or whatever it is," he said.

Chedrawe also worries about the cost of all those background checks, which he said will ultimately be paid by lottery ticket buyers.