Nova Scotia announced on May 8th, 2009 that it is now illegal to sell lottery tickets and other lottery games like keno to anyone younger than nineteen years old aside from several other regulations launched by the alcohol and gambling division of the Labor and Workforce Development Department which became law this week.
Dennis Kerr, the department's executive director said that lottery gamers should not notice any specific and visible changes, since the Atlantic Lottery Corporation has been enforcing the rules and regulations as policies for quite some time. Kerr said that the main difference now is that it is taken out of their policy to accomplish it and it now the law of the province of Nova Scotia.
Some of the other brand new laws include that lottery retailers can only pay out winning tickets that have been verified and signed, must make official results visible on a T-bar display and must give both tickets and official validation back to players. Kerr stated that the new laws are a direct result of questions about the honesty of the lottery system that arose across the whole country in early 2007.
Minister Mark Parent formed an advisory panel to study gaming operations in the province and numerous consultations followed. He said that it recommended a substantial number of oversight and other jurisdictions in Canada have been making a number of changes as well. Kerr said that there are about 1,300 lottery outlets in Nova Scotia. He added that the new laws also apply to those who offer online games and the game of Keno but VLT's are excluded from the new law.
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John Sullivan
