Is offshore gambling legal in Canada? The Criminal Code's player offences and the recourse players lose

Offshore gambling, for a Canadian player, is betting or playing casino games online with a site that the player’s own province does not conduct and manage, which puts it outside s.207(1)(a), the Criminal Code exemption that makes online gambling lawful where a province conducts and manages it. Offshore is not the same as unlicensed: a site can hold a licence from the Kahnawà:ke Gaming Commission or from another province and still be unauthorized in the province where the player lives.

The provincial exemption that makes online gambling legal

The Criminal Code’s basic scheme is a prohibition on gambling except where the Code specifically permits it, a principle the provisions, as they stood in 2002, did not state explicitly. The permission that covers online gambling is s.207(1)(a). It makes it lawful for the government of a province, alone or with another province, to conduct and manage a lottery scheme in that province in accordance with provincial law.

“Conduct and manage” is a control test. In May 2024, the Ontario Superior Court held that a province must exert enough control to remain the “operating mind” of the scheme, and must do more than distantly oversee or regulate it. That is a first-instance Ontario ruling.

Offshore, Kahnawà:ke and out-of-province sites

The exemption is tied to a province and to a scheme that province conducts and manages, alone or jointly with another province. Every site outside such a scheme is unauthorized in that province, whatever licence it holds elsewhere. As of May 2025, the Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario (AGCO) states that under the Gaming Control Act, 1992 an online gambling site must register with the AGCO and sign an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario to operate in Ontario.

Section 207(1)(a) authorizes a province’s scheme in that province, or in that province and another province whose government joins it in conducting the scheme; it does not authorize one province’s scheme in a province that is not a party to it. In May 2026, B.C. Finance Minister Brenda Bailey told the legislature that sites regulated in Ontario operate illegally in other provinces, including British Columbia. That is a minister’s characterisation, not a court ruling.

Kahnawà:ke’s claim to license online gambling

The Kahnawà:ke Gaming Commission states that its authority to license and regulate gaming is a facet of Kahnawà:ke’s sovereign right to govern its own affairs, and that the Mohawks of Kahnawà:ke never entered a treaty waiving that sovereignty. In its 2024 reasons, the Ontario Superior Court described the Mohawk Council of Kahnawà:ke as regulating and conducting land-based and online gaming under an asserted inherent right of self-determination under s.35(1) of the Constitution Act, 1982. The court described that assertion without ruling on whether the right exists.

The Council challenged Ontario’s iGaming model. On May 13, 2024, the court granted it public interest standing and dismissed the application. It found that iGaming Ontario, as Ontario’s scheme stood in 2024, kept ultimate decision-making authority and a high degree of control over private operators and was the scheme’s operating mind, rejecting the Council’s argument that many of those controls were illusory. As reported in June 2026, Kahnawà:ke did not appeal and shut down Mohawk Online Limited’s Ontario operations.

Criminal Code offences aimed at operators

Two Criminal Code offences target the business side. Keeping a common gaming house or common betting house under s.201(1) is a hybrid offence, with a maximum of two years’ imprisonment on indictment. Section 202(1)(e) makes it an offence to engage in book-making, pool-selling or the business of betting, and s.202(2) makes offences under that section indictable, with up to two years for a first offence.

Criminal Code offences worded to reach players

Three offences, as consolidated to July 21, 2026, are worded to reach the player:

• Found-in, s.201(2)(a). Anyone found without lawful excuse in a common gaming house or common betting house commits a summary conviction offence.
• Betting information, s.202(1)(i). Anyone who wilfully and knowingly sends, transmits, delivers or receives a message conveying information relating to betting or wagering commits an indictable offence, with up to two years for a first offence.
• Buying a ticket, s.206(4). Anyone who buys, takes or receives a lot, ticket or other device mentioned in s.206(1) commits a summary conviction offence.

Two of the offences use the language of premises and objects: being “found in” a gaming “house”, and buying a “lot, ticket or other device”. The Criminal Code’s text does not say whether a website is a common gaming house that a person at home is “found in”, or whether an online wager is a “lot, ticket or other device”. A player’s criminal exposure for betting offshore from home is an open legal question, not a settled no.

How provinces act against unregulated sites

Ontario has acted against unregulated sites through media platforms and game suppliers, and Quebec tried to act through internet service providers. In May 2025, the AGCO asked more than a dozen traditional and digital media platforms to stop promoting unregulated sites such as Bodog to Ontario residents. In May 2026, the AGCO served Relax Gaming Limited and Arrise Solutions Limited with Orders of Monetary Penalties of $40,000 each, after finding their games on unregulated websites accessible to Ontario players.

Quebec tried blocking at the network level. On May 5, 2021, the Quebec Court of Appeal upheld a declaration that Quebec’s ISP-blocking provisions, which required internet service providers to block people in Quebec from online gambling sites other than those conducted and managed by Loto-Québec, were invalid, because the legislature had intruded on exclusive federal jurisdiction over telecommunications.

What a regulated site owes a player in a dispute

In Ontario, Standard 1.16 of the Registrar’s Standards for Internet Gaming requires registered operators to record complaints, disputes and inquiries, address them in a timely, fair, transparent and appropriate manner, and resolve disputes under Ontario and Canadian law. As of September 2026, Ontario’s AGCO does not decide gambling transaction disputes; the player first uses the operator’s formal complaint process. If Ontario’s AGCO finds rules were broken it can penalise the site, but a penalty does not resolve the player’s dispute.

In Alberta, the Standards and Requirements for Internet Gaming of Alberta Gaming, Liquor and Cannabis (AGLC) require registered operators to provide 24-hour customer care for disputes, resolve disputes under Alberta and Canadian law, and escalate unresolved disputes to AGLC. In Alberta, AGLC cannot get a player’s money back or make an iGaming site return it.

When an offshore site withholds winnings

An offshore account sits outside even that limited structure. As of September 2026, the AGCO has no legal relationship with unregulated igaming operators and assists only with disputes involving regulated sites in Ontario. As of September 2026, the AGCO’s Ontario player information page lists, among the risks of unregulated sites, payouts that may not be timely or accurate and could be withheld or delayed. The Bank of Canada’s retail payments supervision mandate does not include resolving disputes between a payment service provider and its end users.

Player funds and card deposits

Ontario’s regulated market has rules on where deposits sit. In Ontario, AGCO Standard 5.73 requires player funds for OLG-conducted igaming to be held in an OLG account, and requires iGaming Ontario to keep player funds for its schemes under its oversight and available to players. As of September 2026, the OLG.ca Player Agreement (Ontario) provides that OLG or its payment processors hold deposits in a bank or escrow account as trustee for the player, and that an OLG.ca player account is not a bank account and has no deposit insurance. Neither rule governs money deposited with a site outside Ontario’s schemes.

Card issuers set their own terms. CIBC’s personal credit cardholder agreement, effective August 1, 2026, classifies gaming, gambling and lotteries, including online gaming and betting, as Cash-Like Transactions charged as Cash Advances, with interest from the day taken. CIBC’s personal credit cardholder agreement, effective August 1, 2026, also reserves the right to block transactions CIBC can identify as internet gambling.

Self-exclusion covers regulated sites only

Ontario’s Centralized Self-Exclusion Program, administered by iGaming Ontario, lets a player exclude from all regulated igaming sites in Ontario with one registration. Alberta’s AGLC program lets a player exclude from all registered iGaming platforms, from land-based casinos and racing entertainment centres, or from both. Both programs are defined by the regulated or registered market, so an account on an offshore site is outside them.

Share of Ontario online gamblers using only unregulated sites

iGaming Ontario reported on May 21, 2026 that a year-four Ipsos study found 91.1 per cent of Ontario respondents who gambled online reported doing so on regulated sites, up from 83.7 per cent the previous year, and 8.9 per cent reported gambling only on unregulated sites, down from 16.3 per cent. Take 1,000 Ontarians who gamble online: 89 of them would report playing only on unregulated sites, where none of the regulated dispute, fund or self-exclusion rules apply.