A recent decision by Ontario’s top court has ruled that provincially regulated online gambling and sports betting sites could legally allow users to play with and bet against people in other countries.
This means Ontario gamblers could soon be able to join in peer-to-peer games, like poker and sports betting, with people outside of Canada. The decision wasn’t unanimous; the Ontario Court of Appeal ruled the change in game play would be legal in a 4-to-1 decision. The province has been waiting for the decision for over a year, putting the request before the courts last February.
The expansion has experts concerned, and with good reason. iGaming Ontario data shows online gambling has grown since it first launched in the province in 2022, with $82.7 billion in wagers between April 1, 2024, and March 31, 2025—a 31 percent increase compared to 2023-2024.
By expanding the pool of online gamblers to people outside of the country means that pool is now expanded to other time zones as well. So, a person with a gambling addiction can find lots of people up and at their terminals in the wee dark hours of the night and early morning.
With affordability issues taking the spotlight, front and centre in the public mind and pocketbooks, the lure of winning a path to financial security is strong. Addictions organizations have reported alarming rises in the number of people seeking help.
The need for special regulations to assist in preventing the immense damage that gambling addiction can do to families is obvious, should the expansion of gambling opportunities come to pass. But that need would not be as dire, should the province step back from preying on the vulnerable.
The province under Premier Doug Ford seems addicted itself on the largesse of sin taxes—given the heady expansion of alcohol sales to every corner and store in the province (despite its quarter billion-dollar payout to The Beer Store) and the impending loss of the most successful recycling program known to man. That expansion includes each of the rest stops on our major highways. Those same stops also feature vending machines that dispense scratch and other lottery tickets.
Can electronic gambling machines in every corner store be far behind?
The expansion of online gambling also means the expansion of online money laundering—as gambling is one of the favoured avenues of organized crime internationally. The cost of effectively blocking that path just adds more costs to the taxpayer as police services struggle to shore up the law enforcement dam.
But the real cost comes in the damage caused to families.
The number of calls to the Ontario Problem Gambling Helpline increased from a monthly average of 131.1 before the pandemic to 184.1 after online gambling was legalized, and this is the kicker, most recent calls are related to online gambling.
It is impossible to miss the immense increase in sports gambling advertising as the purveyors of gambling sites cast their lines into the pool to pull in more fish. The influx of new gamblers means that the number of “heavily engaged” consumers, from which studies show a disproportionate portion of the take derives, are also being reeled in.
Our provincial masters are supposed to be looking out for society’s best interests, not stoking the fires of tragedy and looking for ways to haul in ever greater numbers of victims.
Let us step back from mining the vulnerable to stuff provincial coffers and start thinking about the long-term societal impact and costs associated with the expansion of online gambling and alcohol sales.
There will likely always be those who can be addicted to gambling, but there are ways to help stem the tide and reduce the damage.
One of the simplest of those measures would be to heed the call of the Canadian Mental Health Association to ban all gambling advertisement—you know, the same thing we do for cigarettes–-or at least as heavily regulated as alcohol advertising.
Corruption seems to be the order of the day and with the increase in alcohol and gambling our youth are prime targets. The dangers presented by expansion of both “sins” far outweigh the “benefits” they provide. Let’s start taking proactive action to limit the damage.
