Report Recommends Opening Canadian Gambling Market to Private Operators

An independent commission says the Quebec provincial government would be better off if it allowed carefully-selected gambling companies on the market.

Led by Louise Nadeau, a professor at the University of Montreal, the commission began to study the local casino market in 2010. That’s when Canadian gambling laws made it possible for the province’s first online service to go live.

The group was commissioned to study the impact of Espace-jeux, an online gambling site in Canada and the province’s first such virtual service. Nadeau and her colleagues were to look at the issue both from a problem gambling and a government revenue standpoint. They also looked at whether having a local operator would help keep out unlicensed foreign-based gambling sites.

Liberalizing the market

Four years later, the group’s conclusions were put together in a 200-page report, which recommends the local government to allow private operators to enter the market. Researchers have acknowledged that, if this were to happen, the national Criminal Code would have to be changed too, so the whole process would be very time-consuming.

According to Nadeau’s team, the online service has hardly influenced the amount of gambling done by locals. In 2012, public participation rates were very low – between 0.1% and 1.5%. As a temporary solution, the commission suggested that the Quebec administration set up a new government-operated website, allowing private companies to offer their services through that.