Michael Lipton, lawyerĪs for the legal status of these offshore operators in Canada, Michael Lipton, a lawyer and gaming law expert with Dickinson Wright in Toronto, says the issue is best understood by looking at the legality of offshore sites accepting bets from Canada, as well as what the law says about bets made by Canadians.įor gamblers, he doesn't see anything in Canada's Criminal Code that makes wagering through an offshore site illegal. Thousands of offshore gaming sites are based in locales such as Gibraltar, the Isle of Man, and Cyprus, where gambling rules are wide open and governments welcome the tax revenue. The greyness stems from the internet, which doesn't pay attention to provincial boundaries. In Canada, gambling falls under provincial jurisdiction.

Online gambling: is it worth the risk for governments?.Whether the issue is offshore gambling sites, file sharing, or Uber, the laws of the land are still taking time to catch up to the complexities of a connected world.

The longer answer, as might be expected, is less black and white. Online gambling is often called a 'legal grey area,' but does that mean Canadians playing a few hands of internet poker in their living rooms should one day expect a SWAT team to crash through the door and seize their laptop?