A Blood Alcohol Guessing Game and a False Accusation of Racism

The allegations came from an anonymous healthcare worker as part of an Indigenous cultural safety training program conducted in April 2020. They sparked a predictable media frenzy and incensed the public. British Columbia’s Minister of Health Adrian Dix responded as if he were already guilty and appointed an independent, Indigenous-led team to investigate the claim and report their findings by the end of the year.

On November 30, the review reported that they had found no evidence of an organized “The Price is Right” guessing game in B.C. hospitals:

The review produced anecdotal and episodic evidence of multiple activities in the health care system that resemble these allegations in some fashion, but none of them could be described as coordinated, organized, widespread or targeting only Indigenous patients. If such games did occur in the past, they are not occurring today.

So not only was the game not racist, it was not found to exist outside of isolated incidents, the most credible of which were antiquated. The whistleblower referred to in the report as Participant X later amended his allegation, but it was further mischaracterized by preliminary investigators and journalists. What started as a widespread, Indigenous-targeted, emergency room gambling ring became, over the course of the investigation, an offhand, non-discriminatory time-waster played by a cluster of ER workers nine years ago.

In his interview with the review commission, Participant X commented that “some of the things that are coming out [in the media] are hard to understand.” In particular, he was concerned that the estimation of blood alcohol levels by hospital staff was being portrayed as exclusive to Indigenous patients. “I struggle with the racism piece, because it wasn’t targeted at people as much as it was at someone who had enough alcohol or drugs onboard to be hospitalized … It was never about targeting and so it’s morphed into something it wasn’t.” He also denied having called the alcohol estimation game “The Price is Right.”