Decisions Taken By Us Congress Could Affect Online Gambling In Canada

April 10, 2014

As most online gamblers are probably aware, in the last few months, the USA has begun to allow fully legal online gambling in several states. This was facilitated by the granting of localized online gambling licenses to online casino operators in New Jersey, Delaware and Nevada. Although these newly legal online casino sites are only available to residents in these states, it does bode well for a national change in gambling law. Once of the items that has formed part of the discussion this gambling law is a relationship between the USA and Canada, which would have been great news for Canadian online gamblers. However, this may now change.

Although many people have been talking about the USA and Canada sharing a combined approach towards online gambling, there is now some stiff opposition to this idea. Key members of Congress are starting to object to the opening up of a USA online gambling market, and the fact that local online casino sites can operate under this relaxed gambling law, and this of course, would impact any plans involving the collaboration of Canada and the USA opening up a legal online casino market between them.

These members of Congress, such as Jason Chaffetz and Lindsey Graham, would like to see the USA move backwards, and reinstate gambling law based on the ancient Wire Act. Something that it has taken an awful long time to move away form in recent years.

These Senators have managed to form a new coalition, the Coalition for Consumer and online Protection, that is entirely against any form of gambling law reform that would make online casino play legal in the USA. If Canada were hoping to come in to the market following the USA example, this would then be terrible news for Canadian online gamblers.

The North American Association of State and Provincial Lotteries has also been trying to curtail the advancement of changes in gambling law that would make online casino play legal, so there is quite a bit of opposition.

It would, of course, be great if the USA and Canada did team up to provide proper, legal online casino play. However, although plans to move towards this goal have been made, it would appear that there is still a lot of very serious competition to overcome before Canadian online gamblers have a hope of gaining access to completely legal online gambling. We can only hope that the situation improves.