New Canadian Federal Budget Covers Online Gambling In Canada

On February the 11th 2014, the Canadian Government finally agreed this year’s national budget. Although there was not much different in this year’s budget from last year, there is one part that is seriously going to affect online gamblers in Canada, is it will make online gambling much more difficult. Indeed, this new change in the budget that the Canadian Government has set in stone, is actually going to be more damaging to online gambling in Canada than the events that took place at the end of last year, where major online gambling sites, and service companies, pulled out of the local Canadian market

Finance Minister Jim Flaherty, Speaking in the House of Commons, said that changes will be introduced to “make online casinos subject to the Proceeds of Crime and Terrorist Financing Act (PCTFA).” These new changes are designed, according to the Canadian government “strengthen Canada’s anti-money laundering and anti-terrorist financing regime.”

Canadian online gambling law states that all online gambling sites must follow very strict legislation. This includes keeping long term financial records, and leasing with local officials when a potentially suspicious player might be using the online gambling site to launder money.

Now, we can see how it would be sensible for local, provincially licensed online gambling sites, those that are used totally legally by Canadian online gamblers, should need to come into line with the new budget set up by the Canadian Government. However, the Canadian Government has not made it clear how this will affect international online gambling sites. Until this is made clearer, Canadian online gamblers who prefer to play at an international online gambling site could potentially end up in dire straits, if the Canadian Government insists only applying this new budget to them, and forces even more of them to withdraw their online casino services from Canadian online gamblers.

The complexity and badly put together online gambling laws in Canada have already forced many large international online gambling sites to withdraw their services from Canada, leaving many Canadian online gamblers high and dry, and especially if they were using Skrill as their preferred payment gateway, when Skrill pulled out of Canada at the end of January entirely.

This new budget put forth by the Canadian Government just makes things more difficult for online gambling companies, and this will obviously have a negative effect for Canadian online gamblers.

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