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Cities such as Toronto and Montreal are large and modern but Canada has vast expanses of uninhabited territory. In fact, Canada is the second-largest country on the planet in terms of total area.
While isolated cities such as Yellowknife and Whitehorse may not be meccas for gaming, there are enough urban and developed areas to allow for online gambling in Canada. In this article, we’ll be looking at our top choices for Canadian online gamblers, the laws regarding Internet casinos, as well as some basic demographics about the people who play them.
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When it comes to choosing Canadian betting sites that you’re going to use to gamble with real money, you should take your time with your selection. We’ve given you a head start by providing you with our list. It’s a list we devised not by chance, but by doing the research and checking each and every website with real money gambling in Canada for certain criteria.
Futher Info: The bottom line is that everyone who decides to gamble online will go through a process. And at each step along the way of that process, the website should be well-positioned to help you out, either actively or by the infrastructure they’ve put in place.
What should you expect from the best betting sites Canada can provide? Here are some of the key factors:
What you should ultimately be seeking are sites that have proven themselves to be legitimate. With legitimacy comes safety, and with safety comes peace of mind. If you skimp on any of that, you could be risking your money without the chance of actually winning some back.
Before the rise of the Internet, laws regarding gambling in Canada were much simpler. Each province determined individual policies, whether they involved bingo, casino gaming, or lotteries (horse racing was the lone exception). The Internet crosses such boundaries, however, making regulation a trickier situation.
The legality of a Canadian resident placing a wager at an offshore gambling site that accepts Canadians is still unclear. While the providing company might be in violation of some law, there’s yet to be a private citizen prosecuted for such activity. As of this writing, well over 1,000 gambling websites make their services available to residents of Canada. (Although there’s a bill in Quebec that, if it goes through, would prevent Quebecers from online gambling sites without the government’s approval.)
Federal law has also determined that provinces may operate their own gaming sites as long as residents from neighboring regions are prohibited. This has led to lottery tickets being sold online and limited forms of sports betting conducted by state-run organizations such as Proline.
In 2004, the first entirely legal casino was launched within the borders of Canada. Owned and operated by the British Columbia Lottery Corporation, PlayNow.com is available to residents in the provinces of Manitoba and British Columbia. A few years later, Quebec got in on the action by launching a similar endeavor named Espacejeux.
The following information comes from a study designed to determine the overall popularity of Canada gambling sites. Participants in the poll were asked to name the forms of gaming they had taken part in during the previous calendar year, and this is a percentage breakdown of their responses.
As the above information indicates, online gambling has a long way to go before it’s the most popular option for Canadians. It should come as no surprise that the two most successful choices—lotteries and instant win tickets—are sold in land-based locations where customers go to buy common items such as food and beverages.
If you want to gamble for real money at Canadian casinos and betting sites, you have to think of them, in a way, as your bank. They’ll be taking your deposits and paying out your withdrawals. And, in between, they’ll be holding on to your money so that you can dip into it to gamble whenever the need arises.
For that reason, it’s a good thing if the sites have many different methods available with which you can take care of the banking process. In other words, they should give you choices about how you can deposit and withdraw. The more choice you have, the better chance you have of finding a method that offers you the most convenience.
Not every gambling site features the same banking methods. But when you use the best betting sites Canada has available to you, you can generally rest assured that you’ll be able to pay, or get paid, with the following options:
You might find other methods such as bank transfers or check payments available depending on what site you choose. The bottom line is you should think about what banking options are going to dovetail with your needs. If your chosen site allows it, it’s a good sign that you’re on the right track with your selection.
You might be wondering why you would choose to gamble online instead of doing it in person. What you’ll find is that there are many perks to be had that you just wouldn’t be able to enjoy from a casino. Here are some of the ones most cited by avid bettors in Canada:
Another study was recently conducted to provide insight into the demographic makeup of Canadian gamblers. While this information is constantly changing and evolving, it does paint a vivid picture.
The Kahnawake are an Indian tribe of around 8,000 that live on territorial lands in Quebec. They’re also one of the leading names in online casino licensing, as they formed the Kahnawake Gaming Commission in 1999.
By receiving a license from the commission, an online gambling site may provide services from an approved hosting facility, as well as relocating equipment and personnel to the Kahnawake lands. A rigorous background check must be passed to obtain a license, as well as an annual fee of $25,000 (plus an additional $5,000 for each employee listed as a key component on the application).
Note:Four types of licenses are available, although only three apply to the average Internet casino. The commission currently maintains almost 30 licenses for online gaming, with leading names including Bodog and Intertops.com. The services available from these clients include everything from bingo and sports betting to poker.
In addition to providing a license for online gaming establishments, the Kahnawake Gaming Commission helps resolve player disputes. A yearly report on these deliberations is posted on their website, providing a degree of transparency not shared by most of their counterparts. For example, 2013 saw the commission handle 252 valid complaints, with 110 rulings in favor of the player.
Online gambling is safe as long as you choose the sites that you’re using wisely. We’ve provided a table above with the Canadian websites that we’ve rated the highest in terms of the safety and security that they provide. Choose from among them and you won’t have any worries.
But if you choose a site that you haven’t properly vetted, the results can be problematic. You might find that the site is unable to pay what they owe you, or that they make promises they can’t keep about promotions. Even worse, some sites are nothing more than a front to con you out of your gambling money.
The sites that we’ve listed all feature options that allow you to play casino games for real money on the go. They might do this by providing a mobile-friendly version of their main site. Or they could even provide a dedicated app that can be downloaded directly onto mobile devices such as phones or tablets.
You might find that you enjoy the activity of gambling on mobile devices even better than being stuck at your computer. When you have mobile gambling capabilities, you can enjoy the casino games experience wherever you are. As long as you have a connected device on you, you’re good to go.
Most sites found in Canada are reputable and have your best interests at heart. It’s a good sign if they’ve been in existence a long time and have served Canadian gamblers well in that time. After all, if they had been doing something unsafe, they probably wouldn’t have lasted so long.
One thing that’s important to look for in terms of safety is that the site is licensed to operate from where they’re located. And they should also provide excellent encryption software to ensure that your account is protected from hackers. The best betting sites Canada has to offer have all of these safeguards in place.
All of the sites that we mentioned above are set up to allow you to win real money by playing their games. The catch is that you must first risk money. That requires you to deposit into a banking account and dip into that account each time you play.
Many sites will also allow you to “demo” games for free without risking anything. You won’t be able to win anything in return in these scenarios, but it will allow you to test games to see if you like them, or even just to play for fun. In addition, some Canadian gambling sites feature slot tournaments that pay you real money, without any risk, if you outperform your opponents.
You can expect just about anything that you could find in a brick-and-mortar casino to be found on the best Canadian betting sites. They’ll be represented in digital form, but you can play online slots, blackjack, roulette, video poker, and all your favorites. In addition, you can play specialty games of chance for real money, as well as digital scratchers.
You should also be aware of what are known as “live dealer” games at these online casinos. These are games that are administered by actual employees of the sites instead of in an automated manner. If you want the feel of gambling in a casino without dealing with the traffic and the crowds to get there, choose these games and you’ll be satisfied.
