On October 7, the Supreme Court of Canada spent a few hours on Ontario’s online gambling market. If you play slots here, that sounds like big news. The question the court was asked is narrower than it sounds, though, and for an ordinary slot session it’s narrower still.
What the court was actually asked
Anyone playing on Ontario’s regulated sites has to be physically in the province. For slots, that has never mattered much, because you’re playing against the game and nobody else. For poker it matters a lot. Ontario players on regulated sites can only sit at tables with other people located in Ontario. Pay-to-play daily fantasy contests aren’t offered in the regulated market at all.
In February 2024, the province asked its Court of Appeal a question. Would legal online gaming and betting stay legal under the Criminal Code if Ontario players could join games and betting involving people outside Canada? Ontario’s proposed model is built around peer-to-peer games, with poker and daily fantasy sports as the examples. Ontario players would come in through Ontario-regulated sites, and players abroad through sites regulated where they live. Players in other Canadian provinces wouldn’t be included unless their province and Ontario agreed to it.
Last November the Court of Appeal said yes, four judges to one. Government-owned lottery corporations from Atlantic Canada, British Columbia, Manitoba and Quebec appealed. That’s the case the Supreme Court heard this week.
Most of the argument turns on a phrase. The Criminal Code lets a province conduct and manage gambling “in that province.” Ontario’s position is that it would only be conducting and managing the Ontario side of these games. The lotteries say that doesn’t fit the wording. According to reporting from the hearing, Justice Malcolm Rowe pushed back hard on Ontario’s framing and said “it’s playing with words.” Another justice remarked that the federal government wasn’t there at all. The court reserved its decision.
I’m not going to guess which way it goes. Tough questions from the bench aren’t a ruling.
Where a slot session fits
A standard online slot isn’t a peer-to-peer game. You aren’t sitting across from anyone. Each spin is settled by the game’s own random outcome and its own math. Who else happens to be playing, here or anywhere else, has nothing to do with it. A few thousand more players overseas wouldn’t change what your next spin does.
The rules that shape a spin here come from the AGCO’s game standards: no autoplay, a minimum of 2.5 seconds per game cycle, and a running net position in Canadian dollars. Those standards aren’t what this case is about.
Could a ruling ripple into the casino side some other way? Any big change to a market can have side effects. I haven’t seen anything specific tying slot play to this case, though, and I’d rather leave that blank than fill it in.
Jackpots are the closest thing to a grey area
Slot players do share one thing with other people: a progressive jackpot pool. A slice of qualifying bets feeds a pool, and who feeds it depends on how the network is set up.
Some of the jackpots offered here are Ontario-only. Games Global has described its Maple Moolah network as ring-fenced to Ontario. That isn’t the arrangement everywhere, though. OLG.ca carries Powerbucks games, and IGT describes Powerbucks as one pool linking casino floors and online play across participating provinces. That’s interprovincial, not international, so it’s a different thing from what the Supreme Court is weighing.
Whether the court’s answer could eventually reach jackpot pools, I don’t know. The case as argued is about peer-to-peer games, and I didn’t see jackpots come up in the coverage of the hearing I read. At least one industry commentator has suggested the same legal reasoning might someday be applied to things like progressive jackpots. That’s someone’s speculation, and it isn’t part of this case.
The remark about redirects
One detail from the hearing stuck with me. A lawyer for Ontario’s attorney general told the court that iGaming Ontario has directed every site it’s responsible for to stop redirecting other Canadians to international sites. It came up because the lotteries argue that some operators are using their Ontario licences as a springboard to push people in other provinces toward sites that aren’t regulated where those people live. Ontario’s side said that issue has nothing to do with the model before the court. Justice Rowe seemed to agree it wasn’t the court’s business.
For someone playing in Ontario, the practical meaning is limited. The directive is about what Ontario-regulated operators show people outside the province. I haven’t seen the directive itself, including when it was issued or exactly what it requires, so I’ll leave it there.
So, from the chair
If you mostly play slots, this case is worth following, but it isn’t about your next session. Poker players and daily fantasy fans have the most riding on it. The decision will come when the court is ready. In the meantime, a slot on a regulated Ontario site works the way it did last week, and it will keep working that way until an actual rule changes.
Slots are entertainment, not income, and no amount of research or experience changes the math underneath the game. The Responsible Gambling page has more on that, along with support options in Ontario if you ever want them.