Canada’s New Brunswick provincial government bill would allow regulation of live online casino games
The Canadian province of New Brunswick’s government has introduced a bill that would give it the authority to make regulations governing live online casino games.
The bill, tabled on 27 October, would amend the province’s Gaming Control Act, which currently gives the government no authority to regulate live casino events held online, according to a joint news release from the Department of Justice and Public Safety and the Department of Finance and Treasury Board. The province said the changes would also let it adapt more quickly to new forms of gaming
“Reviewing and updating legislation is an important part of keeping New Brunswickers safe,” said Public Safety Minister Robert Gauvin. “As gaming continues to evolve, legislation must keep pace to ensure games continue to be regulated and responsible and that rules are effective and clear.”
“With a greater variety of online offerings, live casinos are growing in popularity,” Gauvin said. “Regulating these types of games will provide a safer alternative to unregulated offerings in the province.”
New Brunswick’s Finance and Treasury Board Minister, Rene Legacy, also backed the proposals, saying that the province needed to modify its rules to keep up with the ways that people gamble.
“Modernizing the Gaming Control Act is about keeping up with how gaming is changing,” he said. “These updates will ensure that new gaming options are developed responsibly and continue to meet the needs of players in a safe and regulated way.”
The proposal comes amid growing concern about the spread of online gambling in Canada. In Ottawa, Bill S-211, a Senate bill now before the House of Commons, would require the federal government to develop a national framework for sports betting advertising.
Last week, Legacy confirmed the province is also reviewing whether to allow private companies to offer regulated online gambling, which could end Atlantic Lottery’s exclusive position in New Brunswick.
Charlotte Capewell brings her passion for storytelling and expertise in writing, researching, and the gambling industry to every article she writes. Her specialties include the US gambling industry, regulator legislation, igaming, and more.
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The Backstory
New Brunswick’s live-casino bill fits a broader Canadian shift
New Brunswick’s move to give itself explicit authority over live online casino games is a narrow legislative change with wider implications. The bill targets a gap in the province’s Gaming Control Act, which did not clearly empower the government to regulate live casino events delivered online. But the timing places the measure inside a larger debate now moving through Canadian provinces: whether lottery-led systems can keep pace with private igaming operators, offshore sites and increasingly sophisticated digital products.
For years, Atlantic Canada’s legal online gambling model has run through Atlantic Lottery Corp., jointly owned by New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland and Labrador. That structure was designed for a market in which lottery, retail products and video lottery terminals dominated. Online casino, sports betting and live-dealer products have changed the competitive landscape. Consumers can now access platforms based outside provincial control, often with heavy advertising, broad product menus and fewer visible distinctions between legal and illegal offerings.
The live-casino bill therefore does more than update a technical definition. It signals that New Brunswick is preparing for an online market in which game formats evolve quickly and regulators need clearer authority before products become mainstream. Live casino games, typically streamed from studios with human dealers, blur the line between traditional table games and digital gambling. Without a clear statutory hook, the province risks regulating after the fact rather than setting rules before products are widely offered.
Pressure builds on Atlantic Lottery’s exclusive position
The bill follows a more consequential review: New Brunswick is also studying whether to allow private online gambling companies into the province. Finance Minister Rene Legacy has confirmed the government is exploring options around regulating private online operators, a step that could end Atlantic Lottery’s exclusive legal position in the province’s digital market.
That review reflects both fiscal and consumer-protection pressures. Atlantic Lottery has estimated that online gambling operators outside provincial jurisdiction generate more than CA$250 million a year from players across Atlantic Canada. Those platforms do not remit provincial revenue or operate under the same local oversight. New Brunswick budget documents also show lottery revenue has fallen by CA$8 million over two years, adding a financial incentive to reconsider the current model.
Atlantic Lottery’s leadership has acknowledged the challenge. Dallas McCready, who became president and chief executive officer after serving as chief strategy officer, said the corporation sees persistent confusion among Atlantic Canadians exposed to advertising for gambling websites not legally available in the region. In an interview, he said Atlantic Lottery is not afraid of competition, but argued that illegal and gray-market sites operate without provincial oversight, Canadian anti-money laundering obligations or the same safety requirements.
The corporation’s financial importance complicates any move toward private competition. In the 2023-24 fiscal year, Atlantic Lottery delivered CA$487 million to the four Atlantic provinces, including CA$151.2 million to New Brunswick. Its ilottery business continued to grow, with gross gaming revenue up 17% from the prior year. A private market could increase total regulated revenue, but it could also reduce the role of a public monopoly that has long served as both operator and revenue conduit.
Ontario’s model reshapes provincial expectations
New Brunswick is not considering reform in isolation. Ontario’s regulated private igaming market, launched in 2022, has become the template for provinces weighing whether to channel offshore play into licensed systems. Alberta is the most advanced example outside Ontario. Its Bill 48 would create a new Crown corporation, Alberta iGaming Corp., to oversee online gaming while the Alberta Gaming, Liquor and Cannabis Commission remains the regulator.
Alberta officials have framed the bill as a way to regulate the gray market, bring operators such as Bet365 and Bodog into a licensing framework and introduce tools such as self-exclusion. The province’s current legal online platform, Play Alberta, accounts for only about 45% of the sports betting market, with the rest going to unregulated offshore operators. Lawmakers have cited Ontario’s CA$2.2 billion in second-year online gaming revenue as evidence that a regulated private model can recapture activity already taking place.
That legislation has continued to advance. Alberta’s online gaming bill cleared second reading and moved toward further consideration by the legislative assembly. Key details remain unresolved, including licensing fees and tax rates, but the policy direction is clear: Alberta wants to replace a monopoly-style legal offering with a broader licensed market designed to compete with offshore sites.
For New Brunswick, Alberta’s approach provides both a political reference point and a caution. Opening a market requires more than authorizing private operators. It demands decisions on tax rates, licensing standards, advertising rules, product approvals, data reporting, responsible-gambling tools and enforcement against unlicensed platforms. A live-casino amendment can be seen as an early building block in that architecture, even if the province has not committed to a competitive model.
Advertising and channelization become central policy questions
The Canadian debate is also shaped by concerns over gambling advertising. Ottawa is considering Bill S-211, which would require the federal government to develop a national framework for sports betting advertising. Provincial governments are confronting the same issue from another angle: how to distinguish legal gambling from offshore alternatives without amplifying gambling harm.
Atlantic Lottery has argued that advertising by operators not legally available in the region creates public confusion. The Canadian Lottery Coalition has pursued legal action against Bodog in Manitoba, seeking to block the gray-market operator from the province. Bodog has already ceased operations in Nova Scotia, a development Atlantic Lottery welcomed as part of a broader effort to curtail unregulated gambling websites.
The policy trade-off is familiar in other jurisdictions. A recent analysis of proposed gambling advertising restrictions in the Philippines warned that a total ad ban could weaken licensed operators and hand market share to illegal sites. The article argued, based on experience in several countries, that bans binding only legal operators may reduce the visibility of regulated brands while offshore sites continue to reach consumers. The core lesson was that channelization — moving players from illegal to licensed platforms — depends partly on whether consumers can identify legal options.
That debate matters for New Brunswick because any expansion beyond Atlantic Lottery would likely bring more advertising, more brands and more scrutiny. Regulators would need to set rules that prevent appeals to minors and vulnerable people while still allowing licensed operators to compete against offshore platforms. If advertising rules are too loose, the province risks public backlash and gambling-harm concerns. If they are too restrictive, legal operators may struggle to attract players away from unregulated sites.
The stakes extend beyond product approval
Live casino regulation may appear technical, but it touches the same issues driving igaming reform across Canada: revenue leakage, consumer protection, enforcement capacity and the future of public lottery corporations. New Brunswick’s government has presented the bill as a way to keep legislation current and provide safer alternatives to unregulated offerings. That rationale mirrors arguments in Alberta and Ontario, where policymakers have emphasized that online gambling is already occurring and the state must decide whether it happens inside or outside a regulated framework.
The central challenge is causality. Provinces are not creating demand for online gambling from scratch; they are responding to demand already served by private and offshore operators. When the legal market offers fewer products than the illegal market, players have an incentive to leave the regulated system. When the legal framework fails to cover emerging formats, regulators lack leverage over product design, supplier standards and consumer safeguards. Updating the statute can therefore be a prerequisite for stronger oversight, not merely an expansion of gambling.
Still, New Brunswick faces a delicate balance. Atlantic Lottery remains a major public revenue source and a regional institution with an established responsible-gambling mandate. Private operators could bring investment, product depth and a stronger competitive response to offshore sites. They could also fragment the market and increase promotional intensity unless licensing rules are strict. The province’s review of private igaming and its bill on live online casino games are linked by the same question: whether New Brunswick can modernize without losing control.
The next phase will determine whether the live-casino authority remains a targeted update or becomes part of a broader market redesign. If New Brunswick follows Ontario and Alberta toward private licensing, the bill may be remembered as an early step in building the legal machinery for a competitive igaming sector. If the province preserves Atlantic Lottery’s exclusivity, the amendment still gives the government more flexibility to approve, restrict or supervise new digital formats. Either way, the province is acknowledging that online gambling regulation cannot remain static while the market moves faster than the law.
