Recent reports have surfaced indicating that the Government of Canada is planning to officially crack down on online gambling websites doing business with Canadian gamblers.
The recently delivered Federal budget by Finance Minister Jim Flaherty contains a promise to introduce legislative amendments to “strengthen Canada’s anti-money laundering and anti-terrorist financing regime.” The Conservative government also plans to make online casinos subject to the Proceeds of Crime (Money Laundering) and Terrorist Financing Act (PCTFA).
Under Canadian gambling law, casinos must comply with strict recordkeeping policies, including alerting authoritative regulators to any suspicious persons or transactions within the casino. The Tory government wants to make online casinos subject to the same record keeping, identification verification and suspicious transaction reporting requirements as their brick-and-mortar counterparts. It will also regulate virtual currencies such a Bitcoin, a currency that has been under global spotlight recently. Also expected to come under scrutiny will be player-to-player fund transfers, an immensely popular feature on many of the larger online poker sites that allows players to transfer thousands of dollars to and from other poker players worldwide.
Several online gambling companies and payment service providers based overseas have in the past couple of years elected to pull out of the Canadian market.
Pressure is mounting from the provincial lottery corporations who have introduced provincially regulated online gambling to Canadians but who continue to face difficult competition from established overseas gaming operators.
It is still now clear how the changes will be implemented towards overseas operators but international online gambling firms could soon be part of a government crackdown.
Canada Crackdown on Online Gaming Looms on the Horizon
I agree totally that the government should police unlawful movement of money on the online gaming sites that Canadians play on.
However I totally disagree that Provincial Governments have the right to lobby preventing Canadians to play on foreign sites so they are forced to play the Provincial sites. These Provincial Governments should have stayed the hell out of the Online Poker Industry. Their projections probably told them it was a bad investment in the first place, yet they still went ahead with it. This is Canada and citizens should be allow the choice. We are not the money hungry government such as the USA is. Or are we??? There will be a huge backlash against this so back off or your provincial party may not get elected next time!! And yes that’s a threat!!
Its about time!!!
Wow. Does this include online poker?
This is an absolute joke! So you want to stop tax paying upstanding citizens from gambling online in their spare time?
If Canada is going to take away my right to play online gambling games (my personal human right and benefit of living in a free country) then what did my relatives and ancestors die for in WW I and WW II? NOTHING?
The *real* people that fought and died for our freedom are being disgraced. If this crap continues to be allowed there should be a revolution if people can get their faces out of their iphones and androids for long enough there will be.
The United States and Canadian governments should take a long hard look at what they are actually doing! It’s effin hilarious really. Basically it’s “… do whatever you want but don’t mess with our money..” you can get away with murder and all kinds of other nasty junk with a slap on the wrists, but don’t mess with OUR (a.k.a tax payers) MONEY!
Bottom line, you may not agree with it, BUT if I want to put my HARD EARNED *AFTER TAX* money into an online gambling site so I can have some entertainment THEN THAT IS MY RIGHT AS A FREE CITIZEN OF CANADA. IF THAT IS TAKEN AWAY THEN IT IS UNCONSTITUTIONAL!!!
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