The legalization of gambling in Canada began in 1996. In accordance with the MCR Act 26 (the Gaming Act), the Kahnawake Gaming Commission was created. By 1999, the organization developed and approved the rules for regulating gambling in the country. After that, began issuing licenses, including for online casinos and poker rooms. Kanawake is one of the territories of Canada, a Mohawk reservation (local Indians) near Montreal.
The Kanawake regulator was one of the first in Canada and is still in force today. In the same year, the Canadian government completely legalized gambling. All states (10 provinces and 3 territories) were given the right to create their own gambling commissions and supplement the budget by collecting taxes from online and offline establishments. Until 2009 gambling sites were officially banned, but Canadians were free to play at any casino sites in the world. The first province, which in July 2010 issued a license for the organization of online casinos, was British Columbia. Thus, the country officially began to regulate the online segment.
Gambling regulation laws in Canada:
- Section 206 of the Criminal Code defines the list of illegal gambling and actions
- Section 207 of the Criminal Code defines the rights of the provinces to issue licenses, control and regulate games.
More detailed bills can be created at the local provincial level based on these basic laws. Canada’s Criminal Code does not impose any penalties for attending and playing at an online casino that is not licensed. Nor is there any action taken against the organizers of illegal gambling.
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The gambling business in Canada is not just developed, it thrives there. Official statistics notes that at least 135 thousand Canadians are employed in this industry. And the gambling and sports betting themselves are very popular in the country. Both regular casinos and slot machine halls and online establishments operate legally. Now for the review. For a long time there was a moratorium on gambling in the country, but in the 1970s the laws began to change. First in some provinces, and then across the country, gambling was decriminalized. It became possible to officially buy a license and open a casino or a sports betting office. All this is not cheap, plus a very high tax burden. Thus, it turned out that real casinos were not even opened in all provinces.
In 2009, the Canadian government has passed a law making it illegal to play at foreign online casinos without a Canadian license. It’s quite a controversial document, since it formally restricted the ability to play, but it did not prevent them from winning real money and withdrawing it online in any way. In other words, no obstacles for the players were not made. Canadians could easily visit online casinos, choose suitable slot machines and play both for money and for free.
Some foreign online casinos even began working directly with Canadian dollars, so that the citizens of this country did not lose money on conversions. Since then, not much has changed. On the one hand you can’t gamble, but on the other hand no one is stopping you from doing it here, for example. The authorities have tried to simplify the process of getting a legal business license for online casinos – they came up with the Interactive Gaming Licence (IGL).
However, foreign casinos on the Internet especially for such a document are not chasing, they prefer to work the way they work. By the way, requirements to their online casinos in Canada at bestcasinosincanada.net are quite logical and simple: fair play without cheating, guaranteed payment of winnings and geographic principle of registration (account players from their own and other provinces). If on the first two points casinos have no questions, then the third is a complete disaster.
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