The Ontario Lottery and Gaming Commission is preparing to install facial-recognition technology in all its gaming sites, including Flamborough, to keep out problem gamblers, possibly later this year.

Kelly McDougald, chief executive officer for OLG, said the commission will be examining the results of a pilot program currently being conducted at a charity casino in Sault Ste. Marie at the end of the summer. Officials will study the information and technology until they are “comfortable,” she said.

“Then we will make a deployment to all of our facilities across the province,” said Ms. McDougald, in an interview.

The OLG teamed up with two University of Toronto professors who had developed an enhanced facial recognition technology with encryption. Researchers had discovered it might be possible to recognize and also protect a person’s identity through biometric encryption.

Ms. McDougald said the technology would only be used for OLG’s self-exclusion program for problem gamblers. The program involves people who know they have a gambling problem to sign an agreement asking the casinos to ban them from entering all of its Ontario gaming sites.

To assist in enforcing the program, security guards now have to remember the persons’ faces and names from a data base. Ms. McDougald said there are about 10,000 people who have signed up for the program.

“It’s really to respond to our customers desire for assistance,” said Ms. Mc Dougald.

The Ontario Provincial Police, which oversees enforcement at OLG facilities, “are aware of (the program),” said Ms. Dougald.  

But she emphasized the facial-recognition program will not be used to catch cheaters, or criminals.

“We are not working with the OPP from a criminal perspective,” she said. “It is not an area we have explored.”

Ms. McDougald, along with Scott Mitchell, president of the Hamilton Tiger-Cats, was the featured speakers at the second of three OLG-sponsored Tourism Hamilton speaker series at LIUNA last week.

Mr. McDougald assured the gathering of local tourism industry officials that the OLG was being responsible when it comes to issues of privacy.

“We always have to be respectful,” she said. “You can never cross that line.”

The program will cost about $4 million.