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Alberta considers online gambling

Posted on August 13th, 2010

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Ontario is poised to join other Canadian provinces alongside British Columbia and Quebec in the internet gambling arena. With these large locales already enjoying the huge revenues gambling on the internet brings, it looks like Alberta doesn’t want to be left out. A local expert on gambling says Alberta is already feeling the pressure to follow the footsteps of its three predecessors.. University of Alberta gambling researcher Garry Smith says that he is expecting Alberta to follow fairly soon. British Columbia became the first in the entire North American continent to not only allow online gambling, but also offer a government-sanctioned online casino which was launched in June. Shortly after its launch, the website had to be shut down because of minor issues. A review is ongoing, after which, if the review allows, the government will be reopening the site that will service gamers with baccarat, blackjack and craps among other games. By next year, the government is already scheduling the addition of poker.

In Quebec, a plan to start a site on online poker by the provincial lottery corporation by fall is the hot topic. Since 2004, the Atlantic Lottery Corp. has established a gambling presence in the province by means of a website that makes bingo and lottery tickets available to the gambling public. Meanwhile, news earlier this week has revealed Ontario’s plans of jumping in on the online gambling train by the year 2012. Offshore companies are the current big time operators of online gambling sites which means Canadians who gamble on these websites are actually sending the money they gamble to countries abroad. Different provinces estimate huge potential loses if this continues, with BC estimating a $100 million loss in revenue while Ontario estimates close to $400 million. Estimates for losses of revenue due to the current practice is not available for Alberta. Smith says that Research shows though that Albertans are the biggest gamblers per capita in the country, which means betting online can be a very profitable source of money for the provincial government, who incidentally has been low on cash for the past years, and is therefore looking for lucrative sources of revenue.

Lynn Hutchings-Mah, spokesperson for the Alberta Gaming and Liquor Commission said that provincial politicians would really be the people to decide on anything that would put online gambling in motion. She added, “To the best of my knowledge, the government has not considered online gaming,” . She believes that they are only in monitoring mode when it comes to observing what other provinces have been doing with regards to online gambling. Since 2007, the issue of online gambling has yet to make headlines again. That year, Alexander First Nation near Edmonton had plans to offer licenses to companies who want to establish operations in online poker, casino or sports-betting to be done in a data center located in their reserve, something already done in Quebec, where this venture is being run by the Kahnawake Mohawk. Leaders of the Alexander people did not pursue the arrangement after receiving threats from the provincial government that they will be prosecuted, as it is illegal in the province to offer gambling online.

A government-run gambling website will arguably be better for all parties involved especially to bettors, currently at 2% of the entire Canadian population. There are many who find the idea enticing but are afraid of sites that may steal their identity through credit card information theft—a government-run website solves this problem. Alberta should address a number of other concerns before plunging into the online gambling market though, including possible saturation as there are already 24 physical casinos in the province. Charity bingos and casinos may also see a decline in profits once this pushes through. Smith also expressed concerns about online gambling being unsupervised; thus it could be a melting pot of illegal activity such as underage gamers, money launderers and hackers. Moreover, for the government to really benefit from having their own online gambling site, it must ensure that its services are comparable and competitive with the current roster of privately-owned sites.