"The joke going around is that senior management must be worried that they have to replace 13 people," she said. "We don't know if we're going to get paid next week -- the whole payroll processing department is gone."

A spokeswoman for the Western Canada Lottery Corporation told the Sun only 15 percent of lotto tickets sold in Canada are bought in the prairie provinces, yet big wins aren't unusual there.

In October 2005, a group of 17 oil and gas workers southeast of Edmonton shared the largest jackpot of $54.3 million, the report said