What is legal online in Québec

The provincial online site is lotoquebec.com, run by Loto-Québec. The former espacejeux.com address redirects to it. It opened in 2010 under the name Espacejeux. Loto-Québec itself is a provincial Crown corporation created in 1969, and 100% of its profits go back to Québec.

To play there, a person must be 18 or older, a Québec resident and physically in Québec. The site checks where the player is at each sign-in. Online poker, bingo, casino and lottery games may be offered jointly and networked with other Canadian lottery corporations.

Under Criminal Code s. 207(1)(a), the government of a province may conduct and manage a lottery scheme in that province in accordance with provincial law. Loto-Québec operates under the Act respecting the Société des loteries du Québec. It was introduced in 1969 to regulate gambling and keep it away from illegal gambling operators and organized crime.

In a regulatory impact analysis from about 2016, Québec’s Ministry of Finance set out its reading of the Criminal Code. Only a province or its agent may run gambling on its territory, it wrote. Apart from Loto-Québec’s site, all online gaming sites are illegal. The same analysis called Espacejeux the only legal site in Québec and said players did not know that some 2,200 other online gaming sites were illegal.

A 2016 law required internet providers to block online gambling sites not authorized by Loto-Québec. The Superior Court of Québec declared it unconstitutional in a decision of July 18, 2018.

Québec has no licensing regime for private online casino operators and publishes no list of authorized private online sites.

The Kahnawà:ke Gaming Commission was established on June 10, 1996, under the Kahnawake Gaming Law. Since July 8, 1999, it has licensed and regulated online gaming. Its licences cover online casino, poker and sportsbook sites operating within and from Kahnawà:ke. No Québec government list of authorized sites includes them.

Playground, a land-based venue in Kahnawà:ke, does not operate an online gaming site. It says any online ads or websites claiming otherwise are fraudulent. On September 26, 2023, the Commission warned that social media ads from an unknown source falsely said Playground offers online gaming.

Loto-Québec self-exclusion can be set up in person at its offices in Montréal or Québec City, or at any of its casinos and gaming halls. Customers of lotoquebec.com can also self-exclude from their account. Once registered, a self-exclusion is irrevocable for the length chosen. One taken out at the casinos and gaming halls also blocks the person’s lotoquebec.com account.

Gambling: Help and Referral answers 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, at 1-800-461-0140 anywhere in Québec and 514-527-0140 in Montréal and surroundings. Its chat at aidejeu.ca is for Québec residents only.

This guide carries paid links on its home page only, each one marked Ad. All of them lead to the same private online casino site. That site is not lotoquebec.com and is not run, licensed or authorized by Québec. The guide earns a commission, and the partner can change. This page carries no paid links.