From the Globe and Mail on Wednesday, October 7, 2009:

 

Lisa Priest

 

Quebec has the highest number of gambling-related suicides in Canada – some 225 of them over a seven-year period.

But not all provinces compel their coroners to report gambling-related suicides, which often require investigation to disentangle the deaths from other causes.

With no countrywide statistics, The Globe and Mail contacted each province to track the numbers of gambling-related suicides. Although the Canada Safety Council estimates 200 problem gamblers kill themselves each year, The Globe found only 46 such deaths were recorded in 2006 among the seven provinces reporting.

"The less people know about gambling-related suicides – at least as far as provincial governments are concerned – the better for them politically speaking," said Peter McKenna, associate professor, department of political studies at the University of Prince Edward Island. "But they all know that their fingerprints are all over these needless deaths."

Ontario had 12 such deaths in 2006, two of which occurred near a casino. Alberta had nine in 2007, the latest date for which complete data is available, and Saskatchewan had two in 2007. British Columbia had three in 2008.

Nova Scotia no longer tracks gambling-related suicides as it says there is no way to gather the information. New Brunswick had one death in which gambling was a factor in 2007. Prince Edward Island has asked coroners to collect such data when investigating suicides; it said it had one gambling death in the past five years.

Manitoba said it had three gambling-related suicides so far this year. And in Newfoundland and Labrador, there were nine deaths from Jan. 1, 1997, to Dec. 31, 2008, in which gambling was thought to be a stressor. (The province could not break them down by year.)

"I'm very troubled by it in that I'm a believer in government, government is us," said Mr. McKenna, author of Terminal Damage: The Politics of VLTs in Atlantic Canada. "Their principle role is to defend the public interest and to make a positive difference in people's lives, give them a hand up. It's not to kill them, it's not to destroy lives and then profit from it."