The map

Thirteen jurisdictions, and why the answer changes at a provincial line

Gambling in Canada is regulated by each province rather than by the federal government, which produces thirteen different answers to the same question; where the licensed markets are, where the monopolies are, and what each one means for a reader.

One country, and no single answer

Most questions about gambling in Canada are answered badly because they are asked at the wrong level; there is no Canadian regulator of online casinos (no federal body of any kind), there is no national list of approved operators, and there is no federal "licence" an operator could apply for even if it wanted one. The country delegated the whole subject a long time ago, and it delegated it downwards.

The provision that does the delegating sits in the Criminal Code (section 207, in the part about lottery schemes), and it permits a province "to conduct and manage a lottery scheme in that province". Those few words carry an enormous amount of weight (they are the whole constitutional basis of the trade in Canada), because they create a power and give it to thirteen separate governments, each of which has used it differently.

The result is that a question about "legality" is a question about a provincial line, and crossing that line in a car changes the answer, and two provinces decided that the power to "conduct and manage" could be exercised by licensing other people to do it, under conditions the province sets and polices (standards, agreements, audits), and the rest decided to do it themselves. Neither decision is a half measure, and the difference between them is the single most useful thing a reader can hold on to.

• Ontario19+ · own register
• Alberta18+ · own register
• Québec18+ · Loto-Québec
• British Columbia19+ · PlayNow
• Manitoba18+ · PlayNow
• Saskatchewan19+ · PlayNow
• Nova Scotia19+ · Atlantic Lottery
• New Brunswick19+ · Atlantic Lottery
• Newfoundland19+ · Atlantic Lottery
• Prince Edward Island18+ · Atlantic Lottery
• Yukon, NWT, Nunavut19+ · no provincial site

The objection, which is that we have a commercial reason to tell you it is fine

We earn money when a reader opens an account with an operator listed here, so a page explaining the law is a page where a convenient reading would pay us. Readers are entitled to assume we have that incentive, and the only answer to it is to write the inconvenient parts in full. The inconvenient parts are these.

In Ontario and in Alberta the standards that govern advertising reach "affiliates" directly, and that is why the provincial pages on this site carry no offer of any kind. Outside those two provinces the operators we list hold no local licence, because none exists for them to hold, and a reader is making a decision with that fact in view rather than without it.

The federal provision on advertising an unauthorised scheme (section 206, which speaks of one who "advertises or publishes") has never been used against a foreign affiliate as far as we have been able to establish, and "as far as we have been able to establish" is doing real work in that sentence. What we are not willing to do is describe an "offshore" operator as authorised in a province where no authorisation exists.

The licence column on every card carries the authority that actually issued the licence, which in most cases is Malta, Alderney or Kahnawake ("permit holders", in the last of those) rather than anywhere in Canada.

The two licensed markets, and what a register buys a player

Ontario opened its market in April 2022 (the fourth of the month, which is the date the standards took force), and the arrangement has two halves: the Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario registers the operator, and iGaming Ontario holds the "commercial agreement" under which it runs.

An operator that appears in the directory (forty-nine companies and eighty-four sites at the first of September 2026) has accepted the province's standards on advertising, on responsible gambling and on handling a complaint, and the register names the company behind each brand. Alberta followed in July 2026 under its own statute (the iGaming Alberta Act), with the Alberta Gaming, Liquor and Cannabis body registering operators and Alberta iGaming Corporation publishing the sites.

The structure is close enough to Ontario's that an operator in one is usually in the other, and the registers themselves make that easy to see, and the names on the Alberta list sometimes carry the word Alberta in front of them, which is how that register writes them rather than a different brand. What the register buys a player is not a better game (the mathematics is identical).

It is a route: a complaints process inside his own province, a "self-exclusion" system that covers every licensed site at once, and a regulator with the power to fine, and an operator outside that system may be perfectly sound, and the player's recourse against it runs through Malta or Alderney (an authority in another time zone) instead of through his provincial capital.

That is also the reason the provincial pages on this site look different from the rest of it. They list the operators registered in that province and nothing else, they carry the provincial age, and they carry no offers, because the standards in both provinces treat an affiliate link that communicates an "inducement" as advertising of that inducement.

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  Jackpot City Casino

  Alderney AGCC cat. 1 · Kahnawake 00892

  Open Jackpot City Casino

  Commercial link · 19+ (18+ in AB, MB, QC) · operator’s terms apply · checked 21.10.2026

• 

  Spin Casino

  Alderney AGCC cat. 1 · Kahnawake 00892

  Open Spin Casino

  Commercial link · 19+ (18+ in AB, MB, QC) · operator’s terms apply · checked 21.10.2026

• 

  Zodiac Casino

  MGA · Kahnawake · AGCO in Ontario

  Open Zodiac Casino

  Commercial link · 19+ (18+ in AB, MB, QC) · operator’s terms apply · checked 21.10.2026

The eleven monopolies, and the thing they get right

Everywhere else a province exercises the power itself through a corporation it owns. British Columbia, Manitoba and Saskatchewan share PlayNow (one "platform", three provinces), and the four Atlantic provinces share Atlantic Lottery ("Atlantic Lottery Corporation", in full); Ontario also has its own site in OLG, which sits alongside the licensed market rather than inside it; Québec has Loto-Québec; Alberta has Play Alberta.

The territories have no site of their own (Yukon, the Northwest Territories and Nunavut)! A monopoly is easy to be rude about, and the rudeness misses what it does well (the part a player only needs once).

The provincial site is the only operator in the country whose complaints route ends somewhere a resident can actually reach, it funds the help services his province pays for, and its advertising answers to the same government that sets his "age limit". Those are real advantages, and no offshore licence substitutes for them! What a monopoly does less well is choice, and that is where the rest of this site exists.

A single provincial catalogue is smaller than the combined catalogues of the operators in our index, the payment routes are fewer (no "e-wallet" in most cases), and the offers are shaped by a public body's appetite for appearing to promote gambling rather than by competition. A reader weighing the two is weighing recourse against range, and nobody can do that weighing for him.

Québec deserves a sentence of its own, because its position is the clearest and the most often misreported, and Loto-Québec states that "Au Québec, le seul site de jeux en ligne légal est lotoquebec.com", and the province's attempt to require internet providers to block other sites was struck down in 2018, upheld on appeal in 2021, and left there when the Supreme Court declined to hear the case in 2022 (three courts, one outcome).

There is no provincial licence for a private operator and no blocking law either, and our French pages are written for readers in that position.

The ages, which are the detail everybody gets wrong

Nineteen in Ontario, eighteen in Alberta, and those two are worth memorising because they are the two provinces with registers, and because a page that writes "18+" across the whole country is wrong in Ontario and a page that writes "19+" is wrong in Alberta. Québec and Manitoba are eighteen, and most of the others are nineteen, and the sources are not secret and they are not the same document.

For Ontario it is the standard the Alcohol and Gaming Commission publishes for internet gaming (the "Registrar's Standards", updated in May 2026), which excludes a person under nineteen from a gaming site except for the narrow purpose of buying a lottery ticket. For Alberta it is the equivalent standard from Alberta Gaming, Liquor and Cannabis, which defines a "minor" as a person under eighteen.

We set both out word for word on the page about age limits, because quoting a standard is cheaper than asking to be believed.

Where this leaves a reader

The practical consequence is short. If you are in Ontario or in Alberta, the licensed market in your province gives you a register to read, a complaints route that ends at home and a self-exclusion system that covers every licensed site at once. This site will take you to the page that lists those operators.

If you are anywhere else, your province offers you its own site and nothing else, and the operators in our index are the alternative, with the licence each one actually holds written on the card (authority, number, company). Neither answer is the obvious one, and we would rather set out the trade than pretend there is not one.

The register, the age and the help line for your own province are a single click from here, and they are the three things worth knowing before a deposit rather than after one.

By the Canadian Dollar Casinos editorial team · Last updated October 2026 · Online since 2012