Is Online Gambling Legal in Canada? Province by Province

Why the answer changes at the provincial border

Section 207 of the Criminal Code allows the government of a province, alone or with other provinces, to conduct and manage a lottery scheme in that province, and online casino games fall under that rule. The result is a patchwork:

• A provincial site. Each province runs, or authorises, one online casino of its own.
• A provincially regulated private market. Ontario and Alberta let private companies operate, but only after registering with the provincial regulator and signing an agreement with a provincial agency that conducts and manages the games.
• Offshore sites. Casinos licensed in Malta, Curacao, Anjouan or elsewhere, or by the Kahnawake or Tobique First Nations, accept players from many provinces without a provincial licence.

So the question "is there one online casino licence for Canada?" has a short answer: no. There is no licensed online casino Canada-wide; a licence or registration is always for a particular province, and only that province's regulator can tell you whether a site is legal for you to use there. The sections below go through who that is in each province.

Of the 285 casinos we cover, 58 run a site registered for Ontario and 40 a site registered for Alberta, according to their own pages and the regulator lists. Each casino page shows which site serves which province and under which licence.

Ontario: AGCO registration plus an iGaming Ontario agreement

Ontario's private market opened on 4 April 2022. A private casino may serve Ontario only if it is registered with the Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario (AGCO) and has signed an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario, the agency that conducts and manages online gaming for the province. OLG.ca, the province's own site, sits alongside them and requires players to be 19 or older for casino games.

iGaming Ontario publishes the list of regulated sites. The version we checked on 23 October 2026, marked accurate as of 1 September 2026, held 84 sites, 74 of them offering casino games. If a site is not on that list, it is not part of Ontario's regulated market, however it advertises itself. iGaming Ontario has also launched a tool that lets Ontarians opt out of all regulated online gambling in the province at once.

Many international brands run a separate Ontario site, often through a different company with its own terms. Our casino profiles keep the two apart, and our partner, which is not registered in Ontario, is never promoted to visitors there.

Online casino Canada Alberta: the newest regulated market

Alberta's market for private operators opened on 13 July 2026. From that date, every operator must be registered with Alberta Gaming, Liquor and Cannabis (AGLC) and have signed a commercial agreement with the Alberta iGaming Corporation (AiGC). The two have separate jobs: AGLC handles regulatory oversight, while AiGC handles the commercial agreements, anti-money laundering, financials and reporting.

• AGLC's register lists each operator with an expiry date; the operator registrations we checked expire on 13 July 2027.
• The AiGC list of approved sites held 51 entries when we checked it on 23 October 2026.
• Advertising by registered operators must include responsible-gambling information, including 211 Alberta, and approved operators' ads carry the AiGC logo.
• AGLC runs a central self-exclusion program with three choices: all registered iGaming platforms, all land-based casinos and racing entertainment centres, or both.

PlayAlberta, run by AGLC, remains the province's own site. Its terms require players to be at least 18 and physically located in Alberta. Of the casinos we cover, 40 run a site registered for Alberta; each profile names it.

British Columbia, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Quebec

These four provinces have no private regulated market. Each offers online casino games through one provincial site:

• British Columbia: PlayNow.com, operated by the British Columbia Lottery Corporation (BCLC) and available only to players located in BC. A British Columbia Canada online casino with provincial oversight means this one site; the legal age is 19.
• Saskatchewan: PlayNow Saskatchewan, operated by the Saskatchewan Indian Gaming Authority, for players located in the province.
• Manitoba: PlayNow Manitoba, operated by Manitoba Liquor & Lotteries. Its player agreement requires players to be at least 18, Manitoba residents and physically in Manitoba. Manitoba casino slots online, in the regulated sense, means this site.
• Quebec: Loto-Québec's online casino at espacejeux.com, for Quebec residents aged 18 and over.

Offshore casinos also accept players from these provinces, and many of the brands on our list say so in their terms. None of them holds a licence from BC, Saskatchewan, Manitoba or Quebec, and a provincial self-exclusion does not cover them.

Atlantic Canada, including casino slots in Newfoundland

New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland and Labrador share one lottery corporation, Atlantic Lottery, a partnership of the four provincial governments. Its online platform reached New Brunswick in 2020 and Nova Scotia in 2022.

Newfoundland and Labrador came last. Until June 2023 there were no regulated online casino slots Newfoundland residents could play: the provincial government announced on 12 June 2023 that an online gaming platform was now available in Newfoundland and Labrador through Atlantic Lottery, and called Atlantic Lottery the only regulated provider in the region. The same release quoted the province's finance minister saying that residents could reach hundreds of online gaming sites, "none of which are legal or regulated".

That is the clearest official statement we have found from a province on offshore sites. It does not make an offshore casino safer or riskier on its own merits, but it does mean a resident of Newfoundland and Labrador who uses one is outside the province's own system: a provincial self-exclusion covers only the regulated provincial site, not offshore casinos. The legal age across the four Atlantic provinces is 19.

How to check whether a casino is licensed, and what trusted casino reviews should show

A seal in a footer is a claim; a register entry is evidence. To check a casino yourself:

1. Find the operating company's name in the site's footer or terms.
2. Look it up in the register for your province: iGaming Ontario's list of regulated sites, AGLC's gaming registrants or AiGC's list of sites for Alberta.
3. For an offshore licence, use the licensing body's own validator or register, not the site's copy of it. When we followed the Anjouan validator link in Spinit's footer on 23 October 2026, it reported the site as not licensed.
4. Search the regulator's news page for the brand. The AGCO publishes its penalties, such as C$25,000 against LeoVegas in April 2023 for an uncertified slot on its Ontario site.

Trusted online casino reviews should let you repeat those checks: name the licence and the register, link the source of every figure, give the date it was checked and say plainly what could not be confirmed. That is how our casino profiles work, and how we rate casinos explains the six-part score. A safe, legit or trusted online casino in Canada, in the sense that matters most, is one your own province's regulator supervises.