A system used by Quebec casinos to track customers could be employed to prevent suicides and other results of gambling distress, said the activist who forced Quebec casinos to release their reports about possible gambling-related suicides.

Activist Bill Clennett fought for four years to get Loto-Québec to release the information about possible gambling-related suicides.
(CBC)

"The player cards could also be used not just to exploit them but to identify people and have a process whereby you can to try and help them," Bill Clennett said Tuesday at a news conference.

Clennett was responding to reports of two suicides and six attempted suicides at Gatineau's Lac-Leamy casino and the Casino de Montréal between 1999 and 2007, along with reports of more than 150 other incidents between 1999 and 2002, such as collapses and heart attacks, that were released by Loto-Québec Monday under a court order.

The order was prompted by an Access to Information request made by Clennett, a vocal anti-poverty activist who fought four years to get the information.

One suicide report released this week revealed that a casino card was used in the investigation into the death of a man whose body was pulled by Ottawa police from the Rideau River in 1999. That man lost his job after stealing to support his gambling. The card revealed that he had been at the Lac-Leamy casino the night before his body was found and had lost $17,000 at the casino in the previous two years.

'If you're always waiting for the final result and even the death, you're coming too late.'— Lawyer Jean-Carol Boucher

The data on the cards show how often patrons have gambled at the casinos and how much money they have spent. They are used in the investigation of suicides and attempted suicides.

Clennett and his lawyer, Jean-Carol Boucher, argued such information should also be used to prevent tragedies by identifying people who might have the beginnings of a problem.

"If you're always waiting for the final result and even the death, you're coming too late," Boucher said.

Clennett said the reports released by Loto-Québec show only a fraction of the destruction wrought by the province's reliance on gambling.

Many lives are destroyed before anyone ever takes their own life, he said, arguing that Quebec could create a fiscal policy that doesn't rely on gambling revenues to fund government programs.

"We're oblivious to the fact that the social cost of gambling makes it not a very economic, viable way to go and the human cost of it makes it totally immoral," he said.

Programs for Quebecers only

Clennett also criticized the Quebec government for the treatment of its casino customers who live in Ontario.

He noted that 75 per cent of the population in the Ottawa-Gatineau area lives on the Ontario side of the Ottawa River.

"And yet, the services offered to players in distress are not offered to that population," he said.

Services funded by the Quebec casinos to help people with gambling problems are only available to Quebec residents.

Clennett questioned the Quebec government's motivation at releasing the casino reports on Monday, just a day before his own news conference was scheduled.

"The government did everything in its power to ensure this information was not made public and when the court forced them to make that information public, they put that information out just before this press conference to minimize the impact of this information being made public," he said.

Quebec Finance Minister Monique Jérôme-Forget, who is responsible for Loto-Québec, was asked by reporters Tuesday why the agency fought so hard to avoid having to release the records.

"You know, when you're facing the courts like that, you have to be careful," she responded.

Jérôme-Forget said she would talk to Loto-Québec about making such records public from now on.

A spokesman for Loto-Québec, asked about that a few minutes later, said it was news to him and the agency would have to think about it.

The Quebec Court of Appeal ordered Loto-Québec in December to make public information about suicides possibly related to its casinos.

Quebec's lottery commission had fought to keep the information about gambling-related suicides private, saying details about internal investigations in the province's casinos could jeopardize security.