Canadians Work to Identify Compulsive Gamblers

In developments from both eastern and western Canada, public gambling agencies continued their attempts to identify problem gamblers.

Nova Scotia's ombudsman released a report finding that the casino in Sydney did not provide adequate staff training on how to identify "potential gambling addicts." The report was triggered by a complaint from a gambler who claimed that casino staff should have stopped him from gambling before he lost $500,000.

The British Columbia Lottery Corp., which operates 17 casinos in that province, released a 2004 survey of casino workers that revealed that one quarter of the workers reported that gamblers approached them at least once a month to express concerns about their own gambling.

The British Columbia workers noted three principal factors that supposedly indicated a patron had a gambling problem:

• The gambler made repeated visits to automated banking machines;
• The gambler was agitated after losses;
• The gambler attempted to borrow cash to keep gambling.