A man plays poker on his computer connected to an internet gambling site from his home in Manassas, VA, in 2006.Karen Bleier/AFP/Getty Images
The online casino of the B.C. Lottery Corporation has been out of commission for a week following a security glitch - and the government says it has no idea when the site will resume operations.
Housing and Social Development Minister Rich Coleman declined to give a timeline of when the problem would be fixed.
Asked how much this delay has cost the province, he said, "Oh, not a lot because it wasn't expected to be a huge revenue generator in the first couple days anyway. And, frankly, it doesn't matter what the cost is. We had an issue with the technical side of it and it needs to be fixed."
The minister asserted a third party would be conducting an evaluation to ensure a security breach would not be repeated.
The lottery corporation relaunched playnow.com on July 15, with a redesign budget of $7.3- million, to include new games, making it the only site in North America to offer a government-sanctioned online casino.
Just hours after the launch, the site was shut down and the lottery corporation immediately blamed an overwhelming rush of online traffic as the cause. The following Tuesday, the corporation admitted the cause was a technical glitch that allowed some users to gamble using other players' credit cards.
Mr. Coleman said Thursday two additional servers have been purchased to handle the increased online traffic. "We will make sure the third-party review is complete and that the information and privacy commissioner is satisfied with it," he said.
NDP opposition critic Shane Simpson said the delay is an indication of bigger problems at the corporation. "What we do know now is the problems were much more significant at the corporation than let on at the beginning," he said.
"Being far to hasty in getting it [playnow.com]up when they did instead of taking their time to make sure that it was operating properly, and as a consequence it is going to cost us more money than if we would have done it right in the first place," Mr. Simpson said.
The NDP has been calling for Mr. Coleman to deal what it says is a conflict of interest because the same ministry that regulates gambling also promotes gambling. The NDP suggests the two should operate under different departments.
Premier Gordon Campbell said at a Thursday press conference that the minister and the lottery corporation still have his confidence. "When you find problems you have to act to fix them and that's exactly what they have done," he said.