Paul Burns: Canada’s regulated gaming model is built around player protection, not labels

Canada’s sports betting market has changed materially since single-event wagering was legalized in 2021, and Paul Burns of the Canadian Gaming Association says the direction is clear: provinces are using their regulators and lottery corporations to shape local markets, while Ontario and Alberta have also licensed offshore operators and brought them under supervision. For PSPs and gaming operators, the message is simple enough: in Canada, the regulatory wrapper matters as much as the product.

1. Burns says the Safe and Regulated Sports Betting Act (Bill C-218) had “enormous stakeholder support” in 2021, including from provinces, the gaming industry, professional sports, and law enforcement, when it was before the Senate of Canada. His view is that legal sports betting gives provinces the tools to offer Canadians a safe and legal option while channeling economic benefits to licensed gaming operators, communities, and provincial governments.
2. He points out that every province has moved quickly to take advantage of the shift through its own lottery corporation. Ontario and Alberta took a different route: they chose to license and regulate offshore operators so those operators could offer products to local customers and operate under player-protection rules.
3. In Burns’s view, the market’s evolution since 2021 has been driven by several concrete factors: the launch of new regulated markets and products, technological innovation, changes in public perception of gaming, consumer demand for new and engaging channels, and competition in a globalized market. For payments teams, that usually means more jurisdictions, more rulebooks, and less room for sloppy onboarding.
4. On sports-related digital products and prediction markets, Burns says the Canadian Gaming Association has long held that sports wagering should be offered only through provincial gaming regulators, and that the framework should depend on what a product does, not what it is called. The Canadian Securities Administrations and the Canadian Investment Regulatory Organization issued guidance in August 2026 and, as Burns describes it, drew a clear line: the distinction between a sports contract and a sports bet should not be reduced to semantics.
5. He also says provincial gaming regulators are the right bodies to manage the risks tied to sports wagering, including know-your-customer checks, anti-money laundering controls, responsible gambling safeguards, and integrity monitoring to detect and deter collusion or match manipulation. In other words, the compliance stack is not an accessory to the product; it is the product’s operating system.

Canada’s market has become a useful case study for high-risk payment providers: provincial control, local licensing choices, and explicit expectations around KYC (know-your-customer), AML (anti-money laundering), and integrity monitoring all sit at the center of how the sector runs. Ontario and Alberta are the examples Burns names, but the broader point is that any Canadian market can, in his words, reflect consumer preferences while still delivering world-leading player protections and strong regulatory oversight.