What an offshore licence is worth in Canada
An offshore gambling licence answers to the country that issued it. The province the Canadian player is sitting in has no say in it.
Toronto · a field guide
Where is it actually rooted?
Every online casino a Canadian can reach has a home somewhere: a regulator, a company, a province where its licence means something and a dozen where it means very little. This guide finds that home and writes it down.
The map, province by province
What each label means →- Open licensed marketOntario
- The only province with a private licensed market: operators are registered with the AGCO and contracted to iGaming Ontario. A complaint has somewhere provincial to go.
- Provincial monopolyBritish Columbia
- One legal site, run by the provincial lottery corporation. Everything else reaching a BC player is offshore, whatever its home licence says.
- Provincial monopolyQuebec
- Loto-Quebec runs the only provincially operated offer. Offshore sites are widely used and sit outside the province's consumer protection.
- Provincial, market in motionAlberta
- The province runs its own site and has legislated to open a licensed private market. Which operators are actually licensed there is the part to check on the day.
- Regional monopolyAtlantic provinces
- The Atlantic Lottery Corporation covers four provinces with one offer. The pattern is the same: one legal home, everything else offshore.
- Provincial or nonePrairies and territories
- Manitoba and Saskatchewan run their own platforms; the territories have the least local infrastructure of all. Distance from a regulator is the risk here.
Provincial rules move, and these six summaries were last checked on 6 August 2026. What each label means, and how the checking is done, is on the map page.
Latest field notes
All notes →Ontario's licensed market, and what it actually gives you
Ontario is the only province with an open licensed market — here is exactly what an AGCO registration changes for a player, and what it does not.
Provincial or offshore: a two-minute check
A five-step check anyone can run in two minutes to place a Canadian casino site as provincial or offshore, before depositing anything.
Asked often
Is online gambling legal in Canada?
Gambling is regulated province by province, not federally. Every province runs or authorises its own offer, and Ontario is the only one that has opened a licensed private market so far. That is why the same operator can be a licensed business in one province and an offshore site in the next one over.
What does a Curacao licence protect me from?
Far less than a provincial one. It is a licence to operate, not a consumer-protection scheme you can appeal to as a Canadian player, and the dispute process behind it is nothing like the one attached to a provincial regulator.
Do you rank operators?
No. We record where an operator is rooted and what that means for a player in a given province. A ranking would need a score, and a score hides the only thing worth knowing.