Ontario iGaming

Ontario Online Poker and International Liquidity: What the Courts Decided

Casino newsUpdated October 28, 2026

Regulated online poker in Ontario is a closed pool: you can only be seated with other players who are physically in the province. Ontario asked its Court of Appeal whether opening tables to players outside Canada would stay lawful, and a 4-1 majority said yes. Provincial lotteries in other provinces appealed to the Supreme Court of Canada, so the ring fence stays up until the courts and regulators finish.

How Ontario online poker works today

Ontario's regulated internet gaming market has two public bodies at its centre. iGaming Ontario (iGO) conducts and manages online gaming offered through private operators, and those operators act under an operating agreement with iGO. The Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario (AGCO) is the regulator: it registers operators, and iGO signs an operating agreement only with a company the AGCO has already registered. Peer-to-peer poker has been part of that product list from the first day the market opened, alongside casino games, sports betting and novelty betting.

The feature that defines Ontario poker is the location rule. Under the AGCO's Registrar's Standards for Internet Gaming, Standard 3.02 reads: games on gaming sites shall be provided only within Ontario. The only exception written into the standard is a game conducted together with the government of another province. In practice that means:

• the site checks where you are before you play and blocks play it cannot verify;
• your location is re-checked at set intervals during a session;
• operators must detect software and virtualization tools used to fake a location;
• you must be 19 or older to hold an account (Standard 3.01).

Because every opponent must also pass those checks, the player pool for any Ontario poker table is limited to people inside the province at that moment. Lawyers and regulators call this closed or ring-fenced liquidity. For a poker room, liquidity simply means how many players are available to fill cash tables and tournament fields at a given hour.

The reference question Ontario sent to its Court of Appeal

Ontario did not change the rule on its own. Instead, the provincial cabinet sent a reference question to the Court of Appeal for Ontario: would online gaming and sports betting stay lawful under the Criminal Code if Ontario players could take part in games and bets with people located outside Canada?

The legal hook is paragraph 207(1)(a) of the Criminal Code, which makes it lawful for the government of a province, alone or with another province, to conduct and manage a lottery scheme in that province. Every form of legal online gambling in Canada rests on that exception, which is why the words "in that province" mattered so much. Our guide to the legal status of online gambling in Canada covers how the exception works for casino games and taxes.

The model Ontario described to the court works like this:

1. Ontario players keep playing on sites run under the Ontario framework, with iGO conducting and managing their participation.
2. Players outside Canada join the same peer-to-peer games through sites regulated in their own jurisdictions, under those jurisdictions' rules.
3. Players in other Canadian provinces stay out unless their province signs an agreement with Ontario.

What the Court of Appeal decided

A five-judge panel answered the reference in Reference re iGaming Ontario. Four judges held that the proposed model would be lawful under paragraph 207(1)(a). The majority read the phrase "conduct and manage a lottery scheme in that province" as not requiring the whole scheme to run physically and exclusively inside Ontario, noting that the Criminal Code is silent about players in foreign countries.

The majority's answer rested on three assumptions, each of which matters for players:

• Ontario's current iGaming model is itself lawful. The Ontario Superior Court had already dismissed a challenge to it brought by the Mohawk Council of Kahnawà:ke, finding iGO to be the operating mind of the market.
• Players from other provinces and territories stay excluded unless there is an interprovincial agreement.
• iGO continues to conduct and manage internet gaming in Ontario.

One judge, Justice van Rensburg, dissented. In her view a provincially managed lottery has to be conducted and managed in the province, and pooling Ontario money with money from international players would put the scheme outside the exception.

The appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada

A reference opinion from a provincial court of appeal can be appealed as of right. Atlantic Lottery Corporation filed a notice of appeal, and the case is listed at the Supreme Court as Atlantic Lottery Corporation, et al. v. Attorney General of Ontario (docket 42141). The appellants are Atlantic Lottery Corporation, British Columbia Lottery Corporation, Manitoba Liquor and Lotteries Corporation and Loto-Québec; the respondent is the Attorney General of Ontario. The Attorney General of Alberta and the Canadian Gaming Association are among the interveners.

The Supreme Court has heard the appeal and reserved judgment. Until it rules, the Court of Appeal opinion stands but nothing about the player pool has changed in practice. If the Supreme Court sides with the appellants, the closed model simply continues.

What still has to change before Ontarians see foreign opponents

Even a final win in court only removes the legal doubt. Several practical steps sit between that and a shared table:

iGO's business plan states that a decision upholding the Court of Appeal would let it pursue international liquidity for peer-to-peer games, naming poker and daily fantasy sports, and work with operators and government partners on a path to pooled play. No timetable has been published, so treat any announced launch date from a poker site with caution until it appears in an AGCO or iGO notice.

What shared liquidity would change at the table

The case is about peer-to-peer games, where you play against other people and the house takes a fee rather than banking the game. That is a different product from video poker, which you play against a machine paytable, and the reference does not touch casino games played against the house.

If a shared pool arrives, the direct effects are mostly about numbers:

• Cash games: more seated players means more tables running at more stakes, including late at night when the Ontario-only pool is thinnest.
• Tournaments: larger fields can support bigger prize pools and more varied schedules, because prize pools in peer-to-peer events come from entrants' buy-ins.
• Opponents: you would face players regulated elsewhere, while your own account, deposits and disputes would stay with an Ontario-registered operator.

Fair-play rules on the Ontario side would continue to apply to your operator. The AGCO standards require operators to deter and detect bots and other software that gives an unfair edge, to act against collusion and cheating, to stop players from seeing other players' cards, to prevent one person from occupying several seats at a table, and to tell players that accounts can be closed for cheating. How those duties extend to an international network is one of the details regulators still have to settle.

Players outside Ontario

Nothing in the reference opens Ontario tables to the rest of Canada. Alberta has launched its own regulated iGaming market, and the AGLC's internet gaming standards likewise require that games be provided only within Alberta and that only players physically located in Alberta can participate, unless a game is run together with another province's government. An Albertan visiting Toronto can play on an Ontario site while physically in Ontario; back home, the Ontario pool is closed to them.

Whatever the court outcome, poker sessions can run long and tournament fields can make late finishes routine. Our responsible gambling page lists the deposit limits, time-outs and provincial help lines available to Canadian players.

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