Online gambling – If you are an online gambling fan and want to play some gambling games in the online casino in Quebec, you won’t have any problems finding one as both local and international online gambling websites will be more than ready to accept your real money bets. Nothing in the Canadian online gambling laws says that one could be banned from visiting and playing in the offshore online casino, especially is the casino is not physically present in the country.
However, it hasn’t always been that easy and recently, the Quebec online gamblers has all the chances to lose their right to gamble in the world’s best online casinos. The thing is, online gambling in Canada is regulated on the provincial level meaning every province can set forth its own online gambling laws and decide whether its residents can or can not play online casino games and where exactly they can make their bets. And some of them are using this right a little excessively, we might say.
In Quebec, both offline and online gambling activities are regulated by the Loto-Quebec . Created in 1969, the Loto-Quebec has been controlling all the gambling-related issues on the province territory from the sports betting activities to the fundraising lotteries. In 2010, the corporation opened its own online casino called Espacejeux that offers a set of games that includes video poker, bingo, some slot machines, and sports betting options. The number of games is quite limited though and can’t satisfy all the needs of the local gamblers that tilt towards the more advanced international online gambling websites.
Despite the obvious gamblers’ preferences, the Loto-Quebec gambling gross win grows every year. In its latest report, the corporation has shown the increase in revenue of 3.7% when compared with the previous fiscal year while the net profits have grown by 8.5%. Sounds not that bad, doesn’t it? But despite the continuous growth in revenue, the Loto-Quebec made <strong>quite an aggressive move</strong> towards the online gambling monopoly in the province.
In 2015, the Loto-Quebec started to push the legislation to make the Internet service providers to block the international online casinos to increase the revenue even more and prevent the offshore online casinos from competing with the state monopoly. This decision has met a lot of public criticism with the players and experts blaming the Loto-Quebec in censoring the Internet instead of creating the more supportive environment for the open and regulated online gambling market. They said, such moves are threatening the Canada’s freedom of Internet and the players’ rights to make their bets legally wherever they want.
For the long three years, the legislation was being considered by court and here is the good news. On July 18, 2018, the Superior Court has finally rejected the Quebec’s censoring attempts so the Loto-Quebec has been forced to admit its defeat. According to the Court’s decision, the approval of such a legislation would have a negative effect on the freedom of expression. There is still a chance that the Quebec government will appeal the Court’s decision but the chances for the appeal to succeed are obviously quite low so the players can sleep with a peaceful mind and play in every online casino in Quebec as well as in the international online casinos available in Canada.
The tendency might seem quite frightening — if one province had the guts to impose a monopoly on the local online gambling, why would the rest of them refrain from doing the same? No one knows what the future might bring but the Supreme Court’s decision clearly shows that <strong>Canada is ready to fight for the free market</strong> even though its online gambling laws still seem to be unclear and allow provinces to go crazy with their local policies.
