I swear that Grambling Review is not a Canadian website…not that there’s anything wrong with that. We have been covering Canada a lot lately and I am here with more Canadian news, this time about Prince Edward Island. To recap our Canuck coverage so far, British Columbia has launched North America’s first online casino, which was shut down for security purposes and then re-launched. Quebec plans to launch an online casino in the fall and Ontario wants one launched by 2012. Newfoundland and Labrador opposes online gambling and Nova Scotia is all for it, even though the Atlantic Lottery Corporation is against it and wants to protect their own gambling monopoly.

Prince Edward Island, a tiny Canadian island province with only a little over 140,000 residents, may be the next to rock the ALC’s boat. Though the province is also a member of the Atlantic Lottery Corporation, recent reports suggest that it is considering legalizing and regulating online gambling in order to grab an estimated $50 million in revenue.

Wes Sheridan, Finance Minister of Prince Edward Island, said that since many residents are already gambling on overseas online casinos – something he considers dangerous – the best thing he can do for the people is provide a safe, regulated online gambling industry. An added benefit would be that $50 million the market could generate.

At this point, it seems that Sheridan and the rest of the government are open to several options, which could include Prince Edward Island opening their own online casino or the Atlantic provinces sharing one. Since Nova Scotia also wants online gambling, that may be the best idea.

Sheridan told CBC News that he proposes that the government “go forward and put a site up there to compete with these offshore entities and play in a regulated, policed kind of fashion.” Of course, the idea that an online casino is safer if the government runs it seems a little silly when you consider British Columbia’s PlayNow.com debacle.

Are you sick of hearing about Canadian provinces and their deals with online gambling? I hope not. We’ve already heard about British Columbia’s adventures with their online casino, Quebec’s plans to launch an online casino this fall, PlayNow.com, Ontario’s plans for an online casino by 2012 and Newfoundland and Labrador’s opposition to online gambling. I’ve even written about the speculation – largely unfounded – that Alberta may move to regulate online gambling as well. Therefore, I may as well mention Nova Scotia.

Even by Canada’s standards, the province of Nova Scotia is kind of inconsequential for the rest of the world. It’s a small piece of land with fewer than 54,000 residents. Still, sources say that the province’s government is planning to introduce online gambling legislation. This despite the fact that the Atlantic Lottery Corporation, which is the lottery for four governments – including Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and Labrador, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island – is opposed to online gambling.

The Atlantic Lottery Corporation currently runs their own online gambling monopoly, PlaySphere, which sells lottery tickets and allows gambling games such as bingo and keno. Perhaps there is a conflict of interest there, in that they want to be the only game in town. Maybe Nova Scotia can satisfy them by approving an online casino but having it featured on the PlaySphere website. Then again, we’ve seen that online casinos run by governments instead of private businesses aren’t necessarily a good thing.

Graham Steele, Finance Minister of Nova Scotia, supports bringing online gambling to the province and said that they can do it even if all four members of the Atlantic Lottery Corporation don’t agree on the issue.

British Columbia’s controversial online casino is back up and running. At 7:00 PM last night, the British Columbia Lottery Corporation’s PlayNow.com website was re-launched, giving players in the Canadian province the first opportunity in more than a month to play their favorite casino games online.

The online casino was the first launched in North America but it only lasted a couple hours before a security breach caused it to be shut down. A glitch in the software allowed some players to use the accounts of others, wagering with someone else’s money. For security reasons, the website was quickly shut down and only re-launched after an investigation concluded that it was safe.

Following the shutdown of the online casino, the Lottery Corporation went to work investigating the incident, along with an independent investigation from the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner and another review by a private consulting firm, Deloitte. At the end of the investigation, those involved concluded that the problem was caused by a software glitch that would have been “almost impossible” for the BCLC to foresee.

Is that supposed to make me feel better? Right now I’m wondering if there are any other glitches that are almost impossible to see. I don’t know about you, but if I was a resident of British Columbia, I’m not sure I would feel comfortable gambling at their online casino. This debacle is yet another in a long list of examples of how government has never been able to run a business as well as a private enterprise. British Columbia residents should demand private casinos, separate from their bumbling government.

The British Columbia Lottery Corporation estimates that each day the website was shut down they lost $150,000 in revenue. In total, they estimate losing $5 million while the online casino was shut down. PlayNow.com is the first online casino to be launched in North America, though Quebec expects to launch one of their own this fall and Ontario plans to follow by the year 2012.

The debacle that was British Columbia’s government-run online casino has been well-documented, including here on Gambling Review. To be honest, it’s the kind of government incompetence that we would expect to see in Russia, not in Canada. The PlayNow.com online lottery site re-lauched as a full online casino and was only up for a few hours before a security breach required it to be shut down.

The breach was in the form of a software glitch that allowed some players to log into someone else’s account and make wagers using their money. In other words, with the exception of players having their entire bank accounts emptied, it’s pretty much the worst thing that can happen at an online casino.

In response to the security breach and subsequent shutdown, the government began looking at their own mess to find out what went wrong and how to fix it. Now, thankfully, an independent investigation is taking place. The Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner is now investigating the online casino, the security breach, and everything surrounding the sites launch, breach and shutdown. Elizabeth Denham, the Commissioner, is looking into the matter herself.

Though appointed by the government, Denham and the OIPC operate independently of the government, which assures that, at the very least, we don’t have the same idiots who caused the mistake making sure it doesn’t happen again. Sure, the people at the OIPC may also be idiots (I don’t know), but they would at least be non-government idiots.

Denham’s office is working in conjunction with the Gaming Policy and Enforcement Branch to investigate the matter. The online casino can only be re-launched after Denham gives the okay. That’s good news for the people of British Columbia. However, I think the question still remains: Can B.C. residents trust the government to run an online casino properly?

Undeterred by the problems facing online gambling in British Columbia, the Canadian province of Ontario is looking into legalized gambling as a source of revenue. The cash-strapped province could rake in $500 million in windfall profits, according to the Liberal Party.

The province is facing a deficit of $19.7 billion and is looking for ways to add revenue. One possibility the Liberal-led government, including Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty, is actively exploring is online gambling. Canadians living in the province are already betting on overseas casinos and the government is losing out on that revenue. By regulating and taxing an intra-province online gambling industry, the government could add an additional $500 million to the $1.9 billion the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation (OLG) made in 2009.

If they open online gambling to residents of Ontario, the province could follow British Columbia’s lead and have the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation run the casino. OLG Chairman Paul Godfrey supports the idea, saying that “money is going out of this province to other provinces as well as offshore sites.”

The plan is not without its controversy, though. Progressive Conservative leader Tim Hudak is wary of any plan that would put the OLG in charge of a government-run online casino. Citing scandals involving suspicious lottery wins by insiders as well as other problems, Hudak asked “Who is going to trust Dalton McGuinty to run an online casino?”

The Tory leader ridiculed the Premier’s record regarding the Lottery and Gaming Corporation, saying that “this guy has had two consecutive major scandals at the OLGC, they’ve gone through five CEOs, they can’t run the existing casinos,” let alone online casinos. Hudak said that the government is looking for more and more tax money without concern for the safety of the people.

If there have been scandals involving the lottery already, putting them in charge of an online casino seems like a bad idea. Maybe letting existing online casinos operate in the province and charging them a licensing fee (and perhaps taxing them) would be a better idea. Certainly, British Columbia’s debacle with their PlayNow.com website should be taken into consideration as well.

On Monday, when I reported on the fact that Canada’s first online casino had been shut down, like everyone else I reported the reason as too much traffic for the servers. Now it seems that may not be the truth.

On Friday, only hours after PlayNow.com was launched as Canada’s first online casino, the site went down. At the time, a spokesman for the British Columbia Lottery Corporation said that the site was down because of too much traffic to the site. Well, I should have known better than to take the word of a government employee.

On Tuesday, the Lottery Corporation admitted that a security breach was the reason for the website being shut down. It seems that on Friday, twelve gamblers playing on the online casino website had their private information accidentally shared with other users. The Lottery Corp. assures everyone that nothing as sensitive as credit card information was shared, but members did get access to the user names, session time, money spent during the session and account balance.

This happened because of a type of loading glitch called a “data crossover.” When members logged into the online casino, they inexplicably found themselves accessing someone else’s account. Everyone affected by the security glitch has been notified by authorities and are taking the proper precautions to protect themselves. However, the casino website won’t be re-launched until the Lottery Corp. is certain that the glitch has been corrected and that no such security breach will occur again. In the meantime, Canadians who want to play casino games are out of luck.

So why did we first hear that overloaded servers caused a crash of the website, rather than it purposely being shut down because of a software problem that poses a security risk? Well, it certainly sounds better, doesn’t it? Would you rather say “our business is so successful that we couldn’t handle the demand” or “we accidentally shared sensitive account information with other players?”

Some critics have said that the Lottery Corp. rushed the website before it was ready to launch. Though the BCLC insists that’s not the case, the severe security glitch begs to differ. Sometimes it’s best to let the pros, who have been running online casinos for a while, run the casino business. Governments tend to ruin everything they touch, as may be the case here. Legalizing online gambling in the province is a good move, but having the government run an online casino may be too much for them to handle. Admittedly, I don’t know a whole lot about Canada’s governments, but I know governments in general, and they tend to be horrible at running businesses.

The online casino at PlayNow.com was the first online casino established in North America, at least for a couple hours. Other provinces in Canada, such as Quebec, are considering following British Columbia’s lead and opening their own casino for additional tax and permit revenue.