Charles Ingel - Thursday, 23 November 2023 - FeaturesThe Do’s and Don’ts of Online Gambling in Canada are not as straightforward as one may surmise, especially when considering that the online gambling market there became legal and regulated in April of 2022.
If you are a gambler in Canada, having a legal guide to your rights and obligations is essential. Here is why we compiled this article on how to veer toward the side of what is legally safe to do if you’re gambling in Canada.
According to Canadian law, online casino gambling customers have a wide number of rights. These include:
We look at each of these in further detail below:
The regional authorities or the province ones as known in Canada need to regulate all the gambling activities accessible to Canadian residents.
The standard gaming activities include:
As a Canadian gambler who is over 18 years old, you are entitled to access all these options as long as they are legal.
Most online casinos are registered in offshore countries like Malta and Gibraltar. This however should not be a deterrent to those Canadians who wish to use their services.
This is as long as the platforms under which they operate are licensed by well-known and accredited licensing bodies, such as the Malta Gaming Authority, the United Kingdom Gambling Commission, and the Scandinavian gambling licensing bodies such as the Swedish Lotteriinspektionen.
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Online gambling may require the use of remote payments, usually by using debit or credit cards. From a legal perspective, you are allowed to proceed with your payment as long as the bank permits it.
Here are the best five-ranking banks when it comes to online gambling payments:
TD Bank ( Toronto-Dominion Bank)
Whilst TD Bank blocked many online transactions to online casino sites in 2013 due to the fact that at the time online gambling in Canada wasn’t yet legal, they still allow several other methods of funding. With over 10 million customers, they are still among the institutional bodies that allow you to make deposits to online casinos.
Bank of Montreal
Bank of Montreal or BMO treats offshore gambling transactions as cash-like transactions, which is the same as purchasing money orders or travellers’ checks. It views depositing money to online casinos as a means of purchasing items directly convertible into cash.
The Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce
While CIBC claims that it reserves the right not to process gambling transactions, most of these payments go through without a glitch and there are other ways to access your CIBC funds for online gambling.
The Royal Bank of Canada
While it states that it may not allow transactions for gambling purposes, many of its methods will enable the use of its card through a third-party service. Canadians may use their accounts for mainland and offshore gaming.
Bank of Nova Scotia
Scotiabank processes payment transactions to online casino sites operated by a Crown Corporation such as Espacejeux.com for Quebecers, PlayOLG.com for Ontarians, and PlayNow.com for gamblers in British Columbia and Manitoba.
There are two sides to the coin here. The first is that you should be permitted to cash out the money you have put in unless you have started wagering your bonus.
If you have already placed some of your funds in your account and started wagering your bonus, then you have already agreed to some terms and conditions.
Once your account has been activated, it is difficult to take them out and if you manage to take them out, your bonus can become invalidated.
The other side of the coin relates to what occurs if the casino goes bankrupt. If the terms and conditions are fair and reasonable, then you should be able to partially recover your funds, or totally depending on the outcome.
Online casino sites know very well that they need to handle their customers’ data with a lot of care. They should be particularly aware of having it shared unintentionally with third parties.
Make sure you have some form of informed consent of how they are handling your information, which is usually sent to you when you sign up for an account with them.
When it comes to the handling of customer data, all commercial businesses in Canada need to follow the PIPEDA Act.
The Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act was adopted by the Canadian parliament in 2000 and clearly states how each business should fairly handle personal data.
The PIPEDA Act includes ten principles in all and in a nutshell, the data needs to:
As a Canadian gambler, you can make an internal complaint if you believe that your data has been unjustly handled or misused by a casino.
You can take it a notch further and take it to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, which is the department responsible for data issues
The Canadian Anti-Spam Law (CASL) protects all Canadians using the internet, including those who gamble online. This covers your online footprint as well as ensures your unwanted spam emails, programs, and other threats are kept in check.
You have to consent to promotional offers and marketing material sent to you. Consent also includes agreeing to install secondary software for casino purposes. THE CASL also includes cookies and digital history safety.
Casinos need to make sure they are truthful about the products they are selling. They cannot change or omit any facts.
This means they are NOT allowed to:
The terms and conditions of a casino website are not unlike a contract you need to sign to agree to. So when you click the ‘Agree’ button, you reserve the right to be provided a space with fair rules.
Reasonable terms include accounts that cannot be suspended or promos you are eligible for, which cannot be cancelled.
Casinos need to thoroughly explain why they are refusing you a service.
As a Gamber residing in Canada, keep in mind that changes in the casino’s terms and conditions that take place when you are already a signed-up member must be communicated to you before the date they come into effect.
Read our article The Worst Online Casino Bonus Terms to learn more on how to identify a bad bonus and other factors you need to consider when choosing one.
As a Canadian gambler, you should be given access to games that have fair outcomes and are not rigged in any way. Fair games are based on probability and chance.
The game you are playing online should have the same odds as its land-based counterpart.
Most casinos have random number-generating software (RNG) capable of creating millions of different amalgamations for each round or each hand played.
Licensing authorities not only check game fairness but make it a priority. If the casino has a license from a gambling institutional body, then their games are definitely not manipulated.
Here is now a list of responsibilities and commitments which gamblers need to abide by to not only follow legal regulations but to also make sure that they are gambling responsibly:
Underage gambling is a punishable offense that can carry a fine of up to C$1000 and may be accompanied by other penalties such as the confiscation of your driving license or even time behind bars in extreme cases.
The minimum age to gamble in the three provinces of Manitoba, Quebec, and Alberta is 18. However, when it comes to the rest of Canada, the minimum age requirement is 19 whether you are playing at land-based casinos or remotely.
In Canada, it is also important to remember that you cannot enter a casino if you’re underage, even if the premises are part of a hotel or cultural centre.
Technically, amateur Canadian players do not need to pay taxes on their winnings. Officially, the tax to be paid on gambling wins is 0%.
With that said, if you keep the winning sum in a bank account and over time it derives interest, that gets taxed.
A specific tax form needs to be filled during tax season. This is known as the T5 and in it, you need to include all the sums derived from wins, and that have accrued interest.
For professional gamblers, the story is quite different. If a person derives most of their income from gambling events and competitions, whether it’s at physical casinos or online, there are very specific instructions to follow.
A professional gambler needs to file his papers and report all his earnings in the same way that an employer has to file his employees’ income.
If you are unsure how to go about this, you can visit the official government site and reach out to the Canadian authorities for guidance.
Instant bookmaking and anything related to making a profit from private bets goes against the Canadian Criminal Code regulations.
In a nutshell, these state that you’re not to:
You cannot take any betting actions in the place of someone else. You cannot gamble with another individual’s funds. This extends from managing cash to using others’ debit or credit cards or even an e-payment method.
If the casino requests you to send your documents and finds that you are impersonating someone else, this is considered identity theft or identity fraud.
This goes against Section 403 of the Canadian criminal code whereby identity theft or fraud carries a ten-year prison sentence. This is applicable to both online and offline gambling.
Make sure you go through Section 202 of the Canadian Criminal Code. Some of the crimes mentioned above, whether committed once or multiple times, are punishable by a few days in prison and up to two years of incarceration.
Gambling should always be considered a source of entertainment.
If you are spending too much time playing and it is spilling over your everyday life, affecting it in a negative way, here are a few things you can do!
Setting time and betting limits can help you understand when to call it quits for the day.
Loss/ Betting Limits: Decide how much you afford to lose or play prior to starting your gambling session. Loss and Betting limits allow you to deposit or lose a certain amount of money over a certain time window.
Time Limits: You can gamble for a certain time window over a preselected period of time. Keep tabs on the time spent playing. Take breaks frequently and move away to clear your head and decide how it’s best to proceed.
Seek Help For Problem GamblingSpeak to a friend or a family member and seek the help of a professional counsellor or therapist to find a solution to your problem.
In Canada, there are several responsible gambling programs available. There are even independent non-profit programs like St Leonard’s Community Services as well as a couple of programs run by major gaming commissions.
Some of these are:
The overall objective of all these is to make sure the gaming industry works in a socially responsible way.
If setting bet/loss/time limits is not enough for you, you can block yourself from playing for certain periods of time. You might want to self-exclude by either contacting customer support or downloading certain software that might help.
Go through our Responsible Gambling guide to learn more about gambling safely and what it entails.
In this section, we’ll take a look at the legal status of online gambling in Canada, offshore operators, and the need for regulation as well as the impacting technologies affecting Canadian players’ rights and obligations:
Gambling goes way back in Canada with initial forms of gambling involving indigenous games of chance and horse race bets dating back to the 1400s.
Lottery arrived in the 19th century as a bid to fund public works. Soon after that, horse racing became a popular hobby.
The first official casino opened in 1989 in Winnipeg. This was the Crystal Casino which became the first government-operated casino in the country. In 1996 the Kahnawake Gaming Commission was set up to regulate online gambling in Quebec.
The casino industry has been on the up and up ever since.
There are no specific regulations on online gambling in Canada. Players are free to gamble on casino sites that are based outside of Canada.
Laws vary from one province to another. Canada set up its first legal and regulated online gambling market in Ontario on April 4, 2022.
This took long enough to happen but the Canadian online gambling market is well on the rise and there is no looking back.
Hi there! Casino sites are verified and licensed by the institutional bodies in the respective jurisdictions, like UKGC. Many disputes arise between Canadian gamblers and offshore operators. Before signing up, check if the operator is licensed to accept Canadian players.
The Canadian Gaming Association (CGA) is the body responsible for the national casino industry. It forms part of the Canadian Government.
Their main goal is the educate and boost the economic advantages of online and offline gambling. They focus on domain research; finding the best solutions when problems arise; and updating policies.
They work alongside the Canadian Gaming Business Magazine and the Canadian Gaming Summit.
Let’s take a look at the current offshore operators and their regulators and understand why this may soon change for Canada:
According to the Canadian Gaming Association, around $14 billion annually is spent by Canadians on offshore betting websites, some of which are illegal gambling operations.
While it is perfectly legal for Canadian gamblers to sign up with offshore casino operators, the Canadian Gambling Association has been called to settle many disputes between offshore operators and Canadian gamblers.
This is because many offshore operators would be licensed in Britain, the Republic of Ireland, Belgium, Denmark, Italy, Spain, Sweden, and Mexico but NOT Canada.
Other provinces besides Ontario need to follow suit and set up their own regulated online gambling market. Sports gambling is not going away anytime soon.
In June of 2021, the Canadian Parliament passed a law legalizing single-game sports betting, which allows bets on a variety of sports and events including professional and college sports leagues and individual games.
This bill entitled Bill C-218 is expected to lead the way for Ontario and hopefully, other provinces to open Canada up for business where regulation and licensing are concerned.
Ontario is becoming a very hot and competitive marketplace, which means that Canadian customers might eventually leave offshore gaming operators in favor of more regulated local pastures.
Technology will help implement more tools to aid with responsible gambling. Tools more advanced than self-exclusion programs, compulsory breaks, and limit-setting tools are predicted to hit the market soon.
More advanced campaigns will be spread over various channels related to raising public awareness of the risks of gambling. Mobile apps will also offer self-assessment tools and suggestions to help promote healthy gambling behaviour.
Emerging technologies will also help the market progress further. Blockchain can help players bet with more trust and confidence as this reduces the risk of fraud.
Virtual reality may also become part of the online gambling market as players will be taken to new engaging worlds. 5G technology will provide faster and smoother connections.
This comprehensive guide to Canadian gamblers’ rights and obligations has been compiled with the idea of helping Canadian players gain more confidence when placing bets online, knowing the rules, and learning about their options.
Check that you’re eligible to play with the offshore operator you’re signing up with and gamble responsibly!
Charles Ingel is our resident casino and bonus review expert. He makes sure that every bonus on our site is active and tests for fairness. Charles sees to it that we have the best no deposit promos of any online bonus site.
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