No Way Ontario Will Regulate Online Gambling
Published: Friday, October 27, 2006 Online-Casinos.com
NO CHANCE OF ONTARIO REGULATING ONLINE GAMBLING
"It's not an option we are even considering," says provincial minister
The moves in Ontario to ban online gambling advertising in the province herald a hard-line attitude to the Internet-based entertainment favoured by many Canadian players...and there is little chance of any move to regulate rather than prohibit in the province, according to Minister for Government Services Gerry Phillips who is proposing the advertising ban.
Talking to the Reuters news agency this week, Phillips said the ban aimed to stem the flow of young people who are gambling online. The measure, which still has to be approved by the provincial legislature, could come into force early next year.
"I don't see us moving to legalise Internet gaming - that's not an option we're even considering," Phillips said. "But I don't underestimate the complexities of this thing down the road."
Ontario, stung by falling tax revenues from government sanctioned land casinos across the Canadian province, hopes its plan will prompt a federal crackdown on online gaming. The decision by Ontario to block advertising in part reflects falling revenues at the provincially owned Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corp., which runs 10 commercial and charity casinos, slot machine facilities at racetracks, as well as several lotteries.
OLG says net income from the casinos has fallen 75.6 percent in the last five years and was C$124 million in 2005.
Phillips says that a recent study from the Responsible Gambling Council, a provincially funded support group for gambling-related problems, found that visits to online gaming sites rose four-fold between 2001 and 2005. Some 5.5 percent of 18- to 24-year-olds in the province gambled online last year, the council said.
The ban would move Canada away from the more progressive British approach of regulating online gambling, and toward the U.S. approach, which leans toward an outright ban.
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