This editorial is from the St. John's Telegram on Saturday, February 13, 2010:

"And it wouldn't be an ALC panel if we didn't provide the chance to win. Active panel members will be entered into various draws for cash and merchandise!"

That's the front-page website invitation from the Atlantic Lottery Corp. for new members to join their online advisory board, a 5,000-member pool that answers questions about the role and direction of the ALC.

Perhaps because they live inside the bubble of their own business, the ALC doesn't even think it passing strange that they'd be asking for online panellists who would be enticed into the role by the breathless "chance to win."

That being said, there are, of course, many ways to stack a deck.

By next fall, the ALC may be playing with a completely different deck when it comes to extracting cash from the pockets of Atlantic Canadians - by then, in partnership with the lottery corporations in British Columbia and Quebec, the ALC hopes to have online poker and sports betting in place, bringing the addictive wonders of the VLT out of licensed bars and right into the comfort and anonymity of your own home.

ALC, of course, didn't tell us about it. Maybe they told their online panel.

The provincial government has been strangely mute about these plans, too, although, when B.C. launched its preliminary online gambling site last year, The Telegram suggested in an editorial that it wouldn't be long before everyone jumped onto that fiscal bandwagon.

Sound familiar?

Just about the only jurisdiction that does have much to say about the plan is the Quebec government - they held a news conference announcing it - and not surprisingly, they are trotting out a familiar old piece of rhetoric to justify the move: they've got to crack down on illegal sites that already exist on the web, by bringing in a better-trusted, more responsible mob boss - lottery corporations.

In case you don't remember, that was exactly the same reason that was given for the introduction of the VLT to this province by the Liberal government of Clyde Wells.

The money's been great, you might say, but the personal destruction wrought by the last round of crime-fighting lottery takeovers has been extensive and heartless.

The Quebec government hopes to bring in an extra $50 million a year from the venture - implicit in that, of course, is that it hopes to take an extra $50 million a year out of the pockets of its taxpayers.

Interesting details

But that's not the only interesting news about the plan that's come out of Quebec (and virtually all the news about it has come out of Quebec). There's also the news that the agreement between the three lottery companies was needed to give the poker and sports betting system the necessary financial weight to be successful, and that the agreement had to be - and was - approved by the Quebec cabinet.

There are, of course, four provincial governments involved in the Atlantic Lottery Corp., but there's no word on whether the provincial cabinet in this province has signed off on the venture.

Our money on the line

Presumably, in our open and accountable province, the government would have told us by now if they had agreed to a plan to allow people to gamble online from homes in Newfoundland and Labrador.

Because the only place the money's going to come from is from this province's residents.

"Each jurisdiction protects its fiscality," the head of Quebec's lottery corporation is quoted as saying. In other words, the profits that would come to the government of Newfoundland and Labrador would come directly from - and only from - gamblers in this province.

VLTs were presented to this province as a fait accompli. The commitments were already made, the machines agreed to, the structure of the deal done long before the debate even started.

In other words, they were put in place before anyone even knew they were coming, let alone had a chance to say, "Wait a minute, is this really such a good idea?"

In B.C.'s existing system, people are allowed to bet thousands of dollars a day, and even place their bets against an account supported by their credit cards.

It's a disaster waiting to happen, and not one that should be made solely by those who sit around the cabinet table with a healthy lump of disposable income in their pockets from the residents of this province already. They might have a flutter on the electronic cards for fun; they're not playing one last game to try and recoup the car payment or the grocery money.

A provincial cabinet is not a good focus group to decide whether online gambling would be a boon or a bane.

To be blunt, that deck's stacked as well.

This is a topic the public should have a clear chance to weigh in on.

Russell Wangersky is The Telegram's editorial page editor. He can be reached by e-mail at rwanger@thetelegram.com.