News

Monday, 08 February 2010 01:26

Plans to introduce Canadians to online poker are underway in the province of Quebec and are scheduled to come about by September 2010.

Quebec's finance minister, Raymond Bechand announced during the week that the initial plans that will introduce online poker in the province have been finalised and will be put into action in order to allow Canadians to enjoy playing poker online legally. The move forms part of intentions by the province's lottery operator Loto Quebec to offer online gambling services, starting with popular poker games and including sports betting.

Bechand has said that it is envisaged that the province will make in the region of $50 million over the initial three years that the service is in operation. However, it is also expected that Loto Quebec could earn a much larger portion of the Canadian online gambling market that is valued at around $675 million. Of this, online poker plays a significant role and is expected to grow as it has done elsewhere in the world.

Of course, not everyone share's the minister's enthusiasm about the move. The usual anti-gambling factions have been out and bemoaning their repetitive predictions of the numbers of problem gamblers increasing and the dangers that this move will expose to the very fabric of society. The lottery group have been quick to hit back by citing recent public health studies that support the view that by increasing the quantity of outlets for gambling does not proportionally increase the numbers of problem gamblers.

Further opposition has come from croupiers that work in Loto Quebec's land based casinos. They argue that introducing legalised online poker will have a detrimental effect on existing casinos which are already struggling to compete with online casinos. The 1200 strong union that represents croupiers fear that gambling may increase as a result of more online outlets. This is because croupiers are trained to identify problem gamblers they come across in the line of their work and assist them. Online, problem gamblers are far more difficult to identify.

Loto Quebec's President and CEO, Alain Cousineau, has said that residents of Quebec already have easy access to a huge number of online casino and poker sites. By regulating these, it is possible to channel the way gaming is undertaken by customers in a controlled environment where integrity and fairness will be seen to be beyond reproach.

Some of the proposed measures that will be put into place include a requirement to be able to verify the age of a player, the ability to limit weekly funding of accounts and self-exclude themselves or users of their computers from a site if they feel it necessary.