Canada’s Approved Online Casino back Online…Finally

After less than 24 hours of operation and over a month of downtime, the British Columbia Lottery Corporation’s online casino website is now live again – at great cost to the Canadian government.

The BCLC internet casino was ballyhooed as the first government-approved Internet gambling website in North America and represented something of a change to Canadian gambling laws. However, within the first day of opening in mid-July, serious security problems caused the compromising of some 134 user accounts; the response from the BCLC was to the close the site down altogether.

The site went back online on Friday night local time after a review by independent consulting firm Deloitte; Deloitte will also be performing a second intensive review of practices this week. BCLC president/CEO Michael Graydon stated that the downtime had cost the company Can. $5 million (about €3.76 million in revenues) in the 33 days of non-service.

The site offers lottery games, bingo, sports betting and an online casino in Canada’s British Columbia province. Quebec is considering a similar intra-province system and Ottawa is also said to be exploring the possibility. Poker has been promised to come online to British Columbia at a later stage.