Is It a Good Idea to Legalize Online Gambling in Canada? |
Posted: May 18, 2017 |
Legalizing marijuana, prostitution and gambling are probably the three most controversy questions that any government in the world can deal with. I don’t intend to take one side or the other in this conflict, as there are reasons for and against both of them and all of them have been perfectly sound. Let’s focus only on online gambling specifics in Canada, specifically on online casinos this time. Today, an average land based casino can generate thousands of dollars per day, but they have to give a good deal of that money for taxes, paychecks for their employees and other expenses. So, as you can see, the government gets a good deal of that money. But casino owners were not very keen on the idea of giving away their income to the government, so they thought: “Why don't we go online?” So they started making online casinos. This meant that they had a lot more expenses to pay and they could attract a lot more people than they ever could in their land based casino. Thanks to this, they were able to earn more money. The government of Canada has two options here. It could either try to prosecute these online casinos and fight a never ending battle of legislation, going from court to court, or they could try and legalize them, regulate their business and start gathering some money thanks to taxes and licenses. One of the things that helped online casinos in Canada to prosper is located in Kahnawake. This Indian reserve located a few kilometers from Montreal houses the Kahnawake Gaming Commission that regulates and licenses gambling in its territory from 1996 and online gambling since 1999, which makes it the oldest such body in the world. This commission did have some problems with the Canadian government in 2005 because the law in Canada did not allow gambling, but since the Canadian constitution allows the natives to do whatever they want in their reserves, this was soon abandoned. By legalizing online casinos, the Canadian government can not only regulate them and protect the players from any casino owners with a little less scruple than usual but can also make sure that they pay their taxes as well. That is not all as the government is not the only one that can benefit from this. Players that visit online casinos also have something to look forward to. First of all, everything will be strictly regulated, they could expect the same rules in all casinos and they could also expect all of these casinos to pay their winnings in the shortest amount of time. A lot of online casinos in Canada is already owned by the provincial governments like British Columbia - PlayNow, Ontario - PlayOLG. Unfortunately, this is a good deal only for those provinces, since access is restricted for everyone, except for the people who are currently located in that particular province. This means that these casinos have effectively closed their virtual doors to millions of potential players.
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