British Columbia and Quebec are already in the game.
And Ontario is planning to pull up a chair.
As Canada’s largest provinces make a play for a piece of the Internet gambling pot, Alberta may feel considerable pressure to follow suit, a local gaming expert says.
“I would expect the (government) would follow along fairly soon,” said Garry Smith, a gambling researcher at the University of Alberta. “They will say revenues are going out of the province. Other provinces are in it now, so they may think that we’ve got to keep pace, got to compete.”
Last month, B.C. became the first province or state in North America to provide a government-sanctioned online casino, although the PlayNow. com website was shut down shortly after it launched due to a security glitch. Pending a review, the government plans to reopen the service that offers blackjack, craps and baccarat, among other games. Poker is scheduled to be added next year.
In Quebec, the provincial lottery corporation has revealed plans to launch an online poker site in the fall. The Atlantic Lottery Corp has had an online gambling presence since 2004 through a website that offers bingo and lottery tickets.
And earlier this week, Ontario suggested it, too, was looking at jumping into cyberspace betting by 2012.
Smith suggested there is one major reason why these provinces are getting into the market — revenue.
Many of the current online gambling sites are operated by offshore companies, meaning that Canadians who use them are sending their money to foreign countries. Ontario estimates it is losing out on about $400 million a year in this way, while B.C. projects its revenue loss at $100 million.
Similar estimates are not available for Alberta. But considering Albertans are the biggest per-capita gamblers in the country, online betting may be a lucrative source of money for a provincial government that has found itself unusually cash-strapped in recent years, Smith said.
Alberta Gaming and Liquor Commission spokeswoman Lynn Hutchings-Mah said any decision to launch online gambling would be up to provincial politicians, but she wasn’t aware of any serious discussions underway.
“To the best of my knowledge, the government has not considered online gaming,” Hutchings-Mah said. “We are monitoring what is happening in other jurisdictions, but we are only in that monitoring mode.”
The last time the subject made headlines in Alberta was in 2007, when the Alexander First Nation near Edmonton planned to offer licences for companies to set up online poker, casino or sports-betting operations in a data centre on its reserve — similar to a venture currently run by the Kahnawake Mohawk of Quebec.
Alexander leaders abandoned the plans after the Alberta government threatened to prosecute. It is illegal in Alberta to offer online gambling.
Smith said recent studies found about two per cent of Canadians have bet online, with many people staying away due to fear of unscrupulous sites or having their credit-card numbers stolen. Still, the numbers are increasing, unlike some traditional forms of gambling, which have shown a decline in recent years. There are now more than 2,000 Internet gaming sites operating worldwide at any one time, so it’s not something the province can simply ignore, Smith said.
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