News

Tuesday, 02 November 2010 11:33

There are signs that the Mohawk Council of Kahnawake is seeking recognition from Quebec of its sovereign right to oversee online gambling.

The Mohawk Council of Kahnawake, which governs the well known Kahnawake Gaming Commission, has been making noises in the direction of Quebec's government that it may be time for recognition of its sovereign rights with relation to the way online gambling is controlled. This follows an article that was recently published in the Montreal Gazette that suggested there may be something of a showdown on the cards between the Mohawk Council and Quebec's government.

In an interview with Chief John Dee Delormier, he disclosed that he thinks that some kind of intergovernmental agreement on the subject of a "broader landscape" concerning gaming might be a great help to Kahnawake. There are already agreements that are in place with regulators in many offshore jurisdictions, such as the islands of Barbuda and Antigua in the Caribbean and Malta with their two major gaming companies, Mohawk Internet Technologies and Continent 8 Technologies. These companies pay annual dividends of over $4 million to the Council.

It has been fully ten years since the last negotiations were held between the two sides over the topic of jurisdiction. According to a posting on the website run by Continent 8 Technologies, the recent meeting between representatives of the Mohawk Council and Quebec's government is the first to be held on the subject of gaming since 1999. It was instigated by Kahnawake and was meant as a preliminary and tentatively exploratory meeting, as described by Chief John Dee Delormier.  

Mohawk Internet Technologies is responsible for handling up to 60 percent of all the traffic engaged in online gambling across the world and it operates smoothly and without incident. The Chief also noted that with Quebec looking to move into the online gaming arena in the near future, it may be beneficial to work together with those with the greatest expertise in the business.

Pierre Corbeil is the province's minister who is responsible for all aboriginal affairs. He had a rather different take on what went down during that meeting. Helene Sauvageau, a spokeswoman for Corbeil's office later said that gambling was not actually on the meeting's agenda. She said that while the negotiator was keen to listen, there was no undertaking on the part of the Quebec government to negotiate online gaming with Kahnawake.