With jurisdictional disputes, conflicting and/or vague national laws, and the already burgeoning gang of online casinos hosted in friendlier venues, one would think finding a Canadian online casino actually based in Canada to be as rare as an Calgary resident who can’t give you directions to the nearest Swiss Chalet or poutine hot spot.
It turns out that one would be wrong about this.
In addition to the online casinos hosted throughout the world that are permitted to do business with Canadians, Canada is home to a multitude of online gambling establishments.
What Makes Online Gambling in Canada Different?
At one time, you couldn’t gamble at all in Canada, although maybe you could actually. Canadian law is (or was) vague on the subject of gambling online in Canada.
Except for lotteries. Even as long ago as the mid-1800s, the Canadian Criminal Code did not care for them, except perhaps when they were implemented to assist a charity. (PS: You can play online lotteries now in Canada from around the world)
Canadians were permitted to buy a lottery ticket from a charity. You were allowed to bet on the occasional charity horse race—at the race track, of course (none of your Off Track Betting is allowed here, thank you very much). (PS You can also bet on horses online now easily in Canada. You could also buy a ticket to a church raffle.
Canadians really knew how to get wild back in the day.
Seriously though, the Canadian government may not have had an opinion about other forms of gambling, but they pulled out all the stops when it came to preventing and criminalizing lotteries.
Except for the local versions of, “Here’s how we can get a new roof on the orphanage,” noted above, the Canadian Criminal Code said it was illegal to do anything associated with “any proposal, scheme, or plan for advancing, lending, giving, selling, or in any way disposing of any property, by lots, cards, tickets, or any mode of chance whatever.”
Then The Laws Changed
That all changed in 1969 when the Canadian federal government rewrote much of its Criminal Code with the Criminal Law Amendment Act. Among other changes, the amendment allowed the federal government, as well as the country’s provinces, to establish and operate lotteries in order to increase tax revenue.
One bright spot happened in the early 1980s when the provinces sued the federal government for infringing on their lottery rights. The battle ended with the federal government getting out of the lottery business altogether, leaving the industry open to the provincial governments.
Right about now you’re thinking, “So? This is mildly interesting at best. When are you gonna tell me how this all relates to online gambling?”
The fact that Canada took such a strict view on lotteries but remained silent and unclear on other forms of gambling might have been important back in the 1800s, but the Internet was waiting, 150 years in the future, to change all that.
And when online casinos and poker rooms first appeared, they were as dominant in the Canadian internet world as they were anywhere else in the world. However, without a clear set of rules governing gambling, many online casinos stayed away from the Canadian marketplace, and some that had initially offered online gambling to Canadians left the space.
Why did they leave? There’s no simple answer, but for some, it was the idea that the United Kingdon —which shares its Queen with Canada—might withhold licensure in Great Britain because of what online casinos considered the “grey area” nature of Canadian gambling laws.
Sure, that might seem like a far reach, an unreasonable fear, maybe, but people who make million-dollar decisions tend to be careful with their money. Go figure.
In any case, eventually, that fear went away. It helped that in 2010, the British Columbia Lottery Corporation (a part of BC government) added casino games to its already-established lottery website, and in 2012, Manitoba followed along as well. At long last, the online gambling industry had broken into Canada.
Oh, really? Is that what happened to break the ice? Not even close.
In 1998—more than a decade before British Columba went online with their casino—the Kahnawake Gaming Commission (KGC) issued its first online casino license. Yes, while other online gambling operators struggled to deal with confusion and doubt, the Kahnawake Mohawks were busy building an casino gambling prescence.
Based on the sovereign Kahnawake Mohawk territory (situated within the borders of Quebec), the KGC reportedly had (in 2018) some 50 clients operating more than 250 online casinos, all from a server farm housed on Kahnawake Mohawk territory lands. The server farm is administered by Mohawk Internet Technologies (MIT).
You weren’t expecting that, were you? Well, nobody expected the Hindenburg disaster, either, and look how that turned out.
It does make that whole “unreasoning fear of Canada’s grey area gambling laws” a little easier to understand, though, doesn’t it?
What to Expect From Online Casinos in Canada?
Change Came
Okay, we have established that there won’t be much of a problem finding a Canadian online casino. Will there be any differences? The short answer to that question is “No, mostly.” Mostly? Yes. You can sign up with a plethora of online casinos. Some are hosted in Canada, some are hosted by Canadian provincial governments, and some are hosted by the Mohawks.
For the online casinos operated by the various provinces (British Columbia and Manitoba, for instance) you must reside in that particular province to play.
But the rest of the online gambling world typically has no such restrictions. All of the casinos we here at Canadian Casino Gambler work with will work in any province. Still, with the growth of the industry, online casinos have become quite adept at qualifying prospective players. A credit card is often used not only as a method to transfer money, but to prove the age of the prospective player, as well. Bitcoin is also commonly used, and the industry is moving more and more towards using crypto currency for transactions.
Bear in mind that for an online casino to do business with you, it must comply with whatever regulations your specific government requires. Obviously, gambling laws are not the same in the UK as they are in France, just as the gambling laws of China are not the same as those of Australia.
So online casinos have become quite adept at discovering information about you. Nothing scary, of course, but you can expect them to look at your IP address, for example.
IP addresses are used to determine your approximate physical location (at least to the point where they can be assured you’re logging on from Canada and not Antarctica), while actual GPS location services already live on your laptop (Google, for instance) can be used to pinpoint your location more accurately.
The quickest way to find out is to see if you can sign up with a casino you find interesting — no need to actually provide personal information at this point. You’ll find the casino will generally be respectable and speedy about letting you know that you cannot, for whatever reason, sign up with them.
And don’t even think about using a VPN, they are well aware of the IP addresses people use via VPN to try and avoid the location rules.
The Games
The good news is actually great news. You will find every slot, every table game, every live dealer game—even every variation of keno, bingo, lottery and more—you would find anywhere else, simply because, for the most part, the online casinos offering Canadians the opportunity to gamble also serve many, many other countries. The regulators make sure the casinos monitor their players to match whatever criteria the player’s country might require, so you shouldn’t have to worry about whether you’re allowed.
You’ll also find most of the popular poker sites, as well. Play your choice of hold’em, cash games, omaha, tournaments, spin and gos, you name it the online poker sites have it, 24 hours a day.
The Deposits
These are always (or should be) in your location’s native currency, e.g., Canadian dollars for Canadians, Dollars for Americans, Pounds for Brits. More common though is crypto currency these days. Casinos are moving towards crypto deposits because of the ease of transactions, anonymity, speed of transactions, and minimal transactions fees (pennies in fees can move thousands in dollars).
Tips for the Canadian Casino Online Gamblers
Selections of Games
Usually, our first tip for every online casino is to play free versions of games you like before you jump into the money pool, but we’re going to defy our instincts and say this instead:
Make sure the online casino you are making a deposit with accepts Canadian currency. Loonies if you will. For our non-Canadian readers, a loonie is a Canadian one-dollar coin introduced back in the late 1980s. The name comes from the picture of a common loon (wipe that grin off your face!) on the heads side of the coin, and a picture of Queen Elizabeth II on the tails side (go figure). Over time, “loonie” has become synonymous with Canadian money. Naturally a two dollar coin is called the twoonie.
We offer this advice because when you make a deposit at an online casino, their software may default to another currency, most likely US dollars or British pounds. Naturally, this is not good, since whatever credit card you’re making your deposit with could get charged with a ridiculous exchange rate. So make sure you are depositing Canadian amounts. Last thing you want to do is think you are depositing $1,000 Canadian and turns out its $1,000 USD which is closer to $1,350 Canadian.
How Do You Say Fake in Canadian?
Forget any betting systems that predict wins based on what has occurred in the recent past. Just because the roulette ball landed on red the last seven spins of the wheel does not mean it’s more likely to land on green this next spin. It’s not. It’s exactly as likely to land on red as it is to land on green.
There are many formal errors in logic, and this one is called (wait for it) the Gambler’s Fallacy. Good job, gamblers! You got a whole formal logic fallacy named after us.
The casinos know this. Smart gamblers know this. And now, you know this, and are thereby wise and maybe even a bit better-looking. You’re welcome.
If you are determined to be proved wrong about your gambling system, start with looking up “The Martingale System“. There’s a good chance your gambling system is some version of this, and there are plenty of articles explaining why it doesn’t work in the long run.
Bonuses and More Bonuses. Free Money!
One of the best things about online casinos is they have so much competition. Seriously, they will pay you to gamble on their site, often matching your deposit by as much as 100% or even 200%. Imagine your $100 deposit becomes $200 because the casino is offering a 100% sign-up bonus.
There is one catch, however. The bonuses online casinos pay are always paid out in small amounts based on your play. For instance, you might have to wager (over time) $500 to get at the first $20 of that bonus. If you’re an experienced gambler, you know that wagering a total of $500 isn’t all that hard to do during the normal win-lose-win cycle of gambling.
That shouldn’t stop you from taking advantage of deposit bonuses. Think about it: You’re going to gamble there anyway. Might as well get paid to do it. By the way, sign-up isn’t the only time online casinos offer bonuses. They also offer them when you make another deposit, when you get a friend to sign up, when it’s Halloween… Any reason to give out a bonus and an online casino will do it.
Minding Your Business
Sure, you’re at the online casino because you want to enjoy yourself for a while. But should enjoying yourself cost so much? Managing your bankroll is serious business and learning to budget properly takes time.
First, establish the amount of money you are willing to put on the site. This is not how much you’ll bet at a single session, but rather, the amount you are going to set aside for your gambling. Make this separate from your budget items like car payment, utilities, rent, car insurance, cell phone bill, groceries, childs tuition, etc.
Now, set a reasonable amount beyond which you will not gamble during any one gambling session. For instance, if your comfort zone is $50 per gaming session, switch to something else when you have lost that much. Binge-watch your favorite sitcom. Maybe practice your French verbs. Clean out the office. Take the dog for a walk.
Learn to recognize when you are chasing your losses. Everybody does this at least once. It’s human nature to try again after failure or loss. The problem is that your perception of everything changes when you are chasing. Poker players call it “going on tilt” —chasing a win with a growing sense of desperation—and they learn to recognize it in their opponents.
Desperation is not a good habit to get into. It’s a quick road to ruin.
And There You Have It
Do a brief overview of the history of Canada’s seeming flirtation with chaos, aka Canadian gambling laws? Yes absolutely.
Talk about the selection of online casinos offering Canadians the opportunity to play their favorite games? Yes..
Offer some hot tips for improving everyone’s gambling experience that everyone will agree with and then promptly ignore? Yep..
Avoid making any jokes about Canadians’ allegedly excessive use of “eh”? Check.
Guess we covered everything! Now that we’ve given you some knowledge on the ins and outs of Canadian online casinos, you’re ready to take a tour of the top sites we listed back at the top of this article and see for yourself.
Good luck out there! Now that you are probably thinking “I want to check out these amazing casinos, visit our Best Online Canadian Casinos page.
It’s free to sign up at any of the casinos we recommend, and several give you free spins and bonuses without you even needing to deposit! Check out our list of the very top Online Casinos in Canada!
Want province specific gambling information? Of course we have it!