Canadian province of British Columbia announces a government run online casino

The first chink in the armour against online casinos in North America has arrived and from what appears at first to be an unlikely source. Here at www.onlinecasino.ie we have reported many times on efforts to repeal the Unlawful Internet Gaming Enforcement Act (UIGEA) in the United States but the northerly neighbours Canada may have inadvertently put more pressure on legislators when it was announced that British Columbia was launching its own government run online casino. Realising that the residents of the state are already playing casino games  at casinos online, often illegally, Rich Coleman, the Housing and Social Development Minister who is responsible for running the state lottery said “The hard reality is this – that activity is not going away”, “British Columbia may be the first jurisdiction in North America to offer games, but I can predict that it won’t be the last,”

Estimates are that residents of B.C. could be gambling up to C$100 million per year at online casinos and basically the government wants a cut of that to help shore up the annual deficit. The online casino will only be available to residents of British Columbia. Officials suggested that the site would be safer than some of the illegal online casinos and they also suggested that they would be in a better position to help people with a gambling problem with Shane Simpson, a New Democratic Party member saying  “If we’re going to do this as a government then we have a higher responsibility than private operators elsewhere to ensure we are protecting people”. All well and good we think but the real reason is likely to be the income that could be generated. Whether other states in Canada will follow suit with casinos online and whether this is the start of something bigger in the online casino market in North America remains to be seen.