Quebec Online Gambling Working

Group

Presentation to IAGR September 29th, 2014

Philadelphia

Richard Guay

Important dates• Feb. 10th, 2010 - Announcement by Minister

of Finance of permission for Provincial State Monopoly (Loto-Québec) to offer online gambling.

• Pressure from different interest groups

• July 9th, 2010 - Creation of Working Group (3-year mandate)

• Dec. 1st, 2010 - Online gambling offer begins

Mandate

• Evaluate the social and health impact on the population.

• Propose model in order to curtail the illegal gambling offer.

Competing and conflicting views

• Health hypothesis

• Increase number of gamblers

• Increase in the prevalence of gambling problems

• Economic hypothesis

• Channelling of gamblers towards considered legal offer

• Improved trustworthiness and integrity of games

• Setup of effective responsible gaming tools

• Legal hypothesis

• Diminution of illegal online gambling offer

Methodology"Summon the facts"

• Creation of an integrated monitoring system

• Scientific research model to ensure accuracy and independence of data

• Continuous and systematic collection and analysis of data

Results

Health Hypothesis

• Online gambling participation

• 2009: 1.4% 2012: 1.5%

• Online gambling patterns

• Not often, not long, not much

• Online gambling problems

• Too low to estimate

Health Hypothesis

• Confusion between responsible offering of online gambling which should be done by the operator and the prevention of gambling problems under the responsibility of the health department or other independent body.

• Perception of a conflict of interest on the part of the provincial operator.

Economic Hypothesis• Channelling of gamblers towards legal offer

• Only 22% of online gamblers exclusively government site

• Approximately 2,000 other sites available

• Improved trustworthiness and integrity of games

• Very few complaints

• As government site is self-regulated, there are no mechanism of external surveillance or control

• Difficult to assess if there is an improvement

• Setup of effective responsible gaming tools

• 50% decrease in use of responsible gambling tools

• Flashing game advertisement on "help" page with non validated test

• Other sites also had various responsible gambling tools

Legal Hypothesis• Diminution of illegal gambling offer

• Routinely over 2,000 considered illegal sites - No change since government offer

• Not only more sites but they are closer to the

• Why?

• Lack of strong signal from authorities

• Lack of law enforcement (difficulties, priorities, limited sign of organized crime involvement)

• Ambiguity of the criminal laws (no clear jurisprudence, legal elsewhere, presence of operators in Canada)

Legal HypothesisPossible solutions

• Continued prohibition

• Filtering, formal notices, law enforcement, sensibilisation, restriction of public contract

• Change the criminal laws and open up the market

• Set up the rules, regulate properly, tax the profits, assure quality of operators. Focus on shadowy operators

Conclusion • The only way to have

a true picture of the impact of online gambling within a specified jurisdiction is by the use of an integrated independent multifaceted monitoring system.

33%

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Thanks!

Richard Guayrichard.guay@rbq.gouv.qc.ca