Online gambling in Québec, as it stands

Loto-Québec runs online casino games on its own site, lotoquebec.com. Beyond that, it operates 2 gaming halls, 4 casinos and 2 hotels. To play online, a player must be 18 or older, live in Québec and be physically in Québec. The site checks each player's location.

Its position came from Québec's Ministry of Finance, in a regulatory impact analysis dating from about 2016. Apart from Loto-Québec's site, it wrote, all online gaming sites are illegal in Québec. A 2016 Québec law reached further, ordering internet providers to block any online gambling site that Loto-Québec had not authorized. On July 18, 2018, the Superior Court struck that law down.

Québec, unlike Ontario, grants no licences to private operators of online casinos. Nor is there any list of authorized private sites.

The Kahnawà:ke Gaming Commission (KGC) licenses online casinos within and from Kahnawà:ke. A KGC licence is not a Québec authorization. Kahnawà:ke says it regulates gaming within its boundaries independently, without provincial or federal involvement. Loto-Québec said in 2019 that only provincial governments may offer games of chance. The two positions remain unresolved.

Playground, a Kahnawà:ke venue that is KGC-licensed, runs no online gaming site. By its own account, any ad or site that claims the opposite is a fraud. The KGC made the same point in September 2023, warning that unauthorized Facebook ads falsely claimed Playground offers online gaming. The venue itself is a building at 1500 Route 138, not a website.

Only the home page holds sponsored links, and the word Ad flags every one of them. Count them and there are three: in the menu, right beneath the first screen, and near where the page ends. A lone online casino partner is where each one goes, and no inner page carries any. The site draws a commission from them, though that partner is not fixed for good.

That partner is a private online casino. It is not lotoquebec.com, nor does Québec operate or license it. It has no tie to Loto-Québec or Playground either, nor to the Kahnawà:ke Gaming Commission or to any venue covered here. Loto-Québec self-exclusion and the protections of lotoquebec.com do not apply there. A self-exclusion from Loto-Québec venues blocks the lotoquebec.com account, but it does not reach this partner.