Canadian Horse Tracks Want Rights to Online Gambling
Horse track owners in Canada are upset by unfair advantages given online casinos, and are demanding government action to rectify the problem. Although online gambling is currently illegal in Canada, the law is hard to enforce and not considered a priority.
Tracks do have the exception of being allowed to accept bets from customers with telephone accounts, but owners insist this limits them to the immediate area, while online sites operate without boundaries. Further, tracks are subject to restrictions under law, and face heavy overhead costs, neither of which are shared by online casinos.
Many of the online sites are run from a Mohawk reservation outside Montreal. The Mohawks consider themselves a sovereign nation, and not subject to Canadian law.
Canadian legislator Roy Cullen has proposed a bill making payments to online sites illegal for banks and credit card companies, similar to the U.S.'s UIGEA. However, the U.S. law has proved a mess, and there is no reason to believe Cullen's proposition would work better.
A tribal spokesman said they would not object to allowing the tracks full access to online booking, including allowing sports gambling as the Mohawk sites do. Joe Delaronde stated, "If the Canadian government changes their laws and allows that, it's free enterprise, it's a competitive market."
If Canada has been watching the results of laws passed to their south, it will take the wiser path of allowing increased competition, and boost its own tax revenues in the process.
