Canada’s most populated province, Ontario, has been debating for over a year as to whether or not it should offer an online gaming service and it was, therefore, great news when lottery officials announced recently that the eastern province will be following British Columbia in launching an internet site of its own by 2012.
The government will spend the next year and a half deciding how to launch the program in order to trim down its record deficit and Dwight Duncan the Finance Minister announced that he expects online gaming to bring in about $100 million a year. At present Ontario is dealing with a shortfall of close to $20 billion.
The new Internet gaming site will be regulated by Ontario’s Alcohol and Gaming Commission and is set to be operated by the Ontario Lottery and Gaming (OLG) Corporation.
After the launch of British Columbia’s site at PlayNow.com last month that made it the first jurisdiction in North America to legalize online casino games, it was necessary for the site to shut down shortly after the online casino games were launched due to security problems.
Paul Godfrey, Chairman for the OLG said “Across Canada and around the world, online commerce is part of our everyday lives and OLG is excited to start the consultation process for online gaming and growing its marketplace in the future.” He added that the Internet gaming program would implement a strong online responsible gaming program while offering increased player protection, data privacy and secure transactions.