“Gambling will never be safe,” Minister Dale Nally admitted at the second reading debate for Bill 48, the iGaming Alberta Act. “But,” he argued, “there are ways to make it safer.”¹

Alberta has already embraced online gambling through the provincially run Play Alberta, launched in 2020. But the recently passed iGaming Alberta Act will expand online gambling even further.

Through the new Alberta iGaming Corporation, private gambling companies can get a license to operate in Alberta, offering their services legally to gamblers while following various rules and safeguards that the government and the Alberta iGaming Corporation will implement. The government, of course, will get a cut of the revenue.

Gambling, once prohibited under Canada’s Criminal Code as one of the “Offenses against Religion, Morals and Public Convenience”, is now liberalized and easily accessible. With recent growth in online gambling and sports betting, Canadians can now gamble at any time and in any place.

Gambling overall has been shown to lead to suicidality, poverty, relationship breakdown, family violence, neglect of children, and various forms of crime. Christians should oppose opening up the online gambling market as contrary to the government’s duty to protect the vulnerable and not to promote vice.

Online Gambling in Alberta

Gambling is already prolific in Alberta, with the province ranking second in Canada for net revenue per adult resident ($666) spent on commercial gambling in 2024.² Online gambling generated revenue of nearly $235 million in 2024. These numbers do not include revenue from unregulated gambling sites, which makes consumer losses from gambling even higher.

Alberta’s government laments that much gambling happens on unregulated, illegal sites and that those sites are associated with a higher risk of gambling-related harms. Minister Nally estimates that more than half of online gambling in Alberta takes place on Play Alberta.³ The government hopes that Bill 48 will protect gamblers from some of the most harmful elements of online gambling, such as unsecured financial transactions or potentially unfair play.

But even if opening up the online gambling market to regulated private companies will make gambling safer on a per-bet or per-gambler basis, the net result could be to increase total gambling and thus gambling-related harm.

The Impact of Gambling

Ontario is the only other province that has expanded its online gambling market to include private companies. Evidence from that province suggests liberalization-plus-regulation is the wrong approach to addressing the problems with online gambling.

Since Ontario opened the online gambling market to private companies in 2022, commercial net revenue (all sector revenue minus prizes and winnings) for online gambling jumped from less than $500 million to nearly $3 billion in 2024, indicating a sharp rise in online gambling.⁴

Research from the Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction shows that those who gamble more than 1% of their income are at a high risk of financial, relational, and psychological harm.⁵ However, in Ontario, the average iGaming account spends between $232 and $320 per month—well above that 1% of income for most participants.

The harmful effects of gambling speak for themselves. Of fifty-seven different risk factors related to gambling, online gambling is the most likely to result in harm.⁶ When it comes to sports betting, one American study found that after sports betting was implemented in thirty-eight states, between 2017 and 2024, there were 23% more searches nationally for help for gambling addiction.⁷ In Ontario, expanded gambling and heavy marketing appear to have led to an increase in online gambling. In 2021, 34% of callers to Ontario’s Problem Gambling Helpline reported problems related to gambling online.⁸ By 2023, that number jumped to 48%.

Winners and Losers

Scripture emphasizes the importance of working for a living. We are called to work and have dominion over the earth, and not to put our finances at risk in hopes of winning big. Proverbs 13:11 notes that “Wealth gained hastily will dwindle, but whoever gathers little by little will increase it.” As Christians, we should steward our gifts, work faithfully, and share with those in need (2 Thess 3).

Beyond that, though, gambling preys on vulnerable Canadians. You may be familiar with the saying “the house always wins.” And when the house wins, others lose. Even if a person does win when they gamble, they win at the expense of another who might be caught in a cycle of addiction and poverty. Online gambling only serves to make gambling’s victims anonymous and less visible.

But if online gambling is happening anyway, isn’t it prudent for the government to regulate it and capture some revenue? One problem with such a policy approach is the potential for the government to encourage gambling, since more gambling will mean more revenue.

By legalizing and expanding gambling, the government “becomes the house that always wins.”⁹ And it does so at the expense of its citizens. The apostle Paul notes in Romans 13 that the government receives its authority from God to punish evil and promote what is good. And in carrying that mandate out, we acknowledge that the government has a role in taxing its citizens in a variety of ways. But we should be wary of governments that strive to profit from a vice or addiction such as gambling, especially if the government profits in a way that does not discourage the vice in question.

Passing Bill 48 will expand the existing gambling market in Alberta, giving more visibility and easy access to gambling websites, opening the floodgates to new platforms that will enjoy tacit government endorsement. Regulation is appealing to the private gambling companies as it opens the avenue to attract more gamblers. It seems plausible to assume that these companies wish to be regulated because they recognize the financial benefits of being able to promote their apps and websites, even if it means giving a portion of their revenue to the provincial government.

Promotion of Vice

Although Minister Nally admits that gambling is never safe, licensing gambling companies effectively implies the opposite. The UCP government has recognized that ‘safe supply’ of hard drugs is anything but ‘safe,’ yet they fail to recognize that ‘safe supply’ of online gambling may have similar detrimental effects.

Evidence from Ontario suggests that opening the gambling market allows more promotion of online gambling. If you watch sports, you’ve likely seen sports betting ads. One analysis estimated that Canadian viewers of a live sports broadcast were exposed to 2.8 references to sports betting every minute and that over 20% of viewing time included some form of gambling reference.¹⁰ Such advertising has proven effective in attracting more players, getting people to gamble more, and is associated with riskier and more frequent gambling.

The strong connection between advertising and behaviour is why advertising for alcohol, cannabis, and tobacco is strictly regulated. For example, an advertisement for an alcoholic beverage must not show a person drinking it, and tobacco advertising is entirely prohibited.

Government regulation of online gambling is also unlike other taxes on vices such as alcohol or tobacco. Taxes on cigarettes and alcohol raise revenue, but governments also strictly limit where alcohol and tobacco can be sold and how they can be advertised. These taxes are meant to disincentivize people from smoking and drinking. While there are potentially perverse incentives to not eradicate smoking for financial reasons, public policy considered as a whole is clearly not designed to make it easy to buy cigarettes or promote smoking. With gambling, however, governments permit both Crown corporations and private companies to promote it aggressively, and governments receive a cut of their citizens’ losses without deterring the practice itself.

Alberta’s iGaming Alberta Act may well result in increased gambling and increased addiction due to a more open, permissive gambling market. Of course, we have yet to see what kind of regulations are imposed for private companies, and we should advocate for them to be as stringent as possible. Christians can continue to hold our governments to account for profiting from and encouraging vice.

1 - Alberta, Legislative Assembly, Hansard, 31st Leg, 1st Sess, No 96 (9 Apr 2025) at 2835.

2 - "Canada Commercial Gambling Net Revenue & Net Income by Province/Territory by Year," Google Looker Studio, accessed May 30, 2025, https://lookerstudio.google.com/u/0/reporting/3f20dc8b-6e47-420d-8144-a15b18faabc9/page/xyeiB.

3 - Alberta, Hansard (9 Apr 2025) at 2835.

4 - "Canada Commercial Gambling Net Revenue by Source by Year," Google Looker Studio, accessed May 30, 2025, https://lookerstudio.google.com/u/0/reporting/3f20dc8b-6e47-420d-8144-a15b18faabc9/page/xyeiB.

5 - M. M. Young et al., Developing Lower-Risk Gambling Guidelines (Ottawa, Ont.: Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction, 2021), 10, https://gamblingguidelines.ca/app/uploads/2021/01/LRGG-Developing-Lower-Risk-Gambling-Guidelines-Report-2021-en.pdf.

6 - Y. Allami et al., "A Meta-analysis of Problem Gambling Risk Factors in the General Adult Population," Addiction (Abingdon, England) 116, no. 11 (2021): 1, https://doi.org/10.1111/add.15449.

7 - A. Yeola et al., "Growing Health Concern Regarding Gambling Addiction in the Age of Sportsbooks," JAMA Internal Medicine 185, no. 4 (2025), https://doi.org/10.1001/jamainternmed.2024.8193.

8 - N. E. Turner, L. Sinclair, and F. I. Matheson, "Brief Report: The Rise of Online Betting in Ontario," Journal of Gambling Studies 40, no. 3 (2024): 709,1007/s10899-023-10268-1"> https://doi.org/10.1007/s10899-023-10268-1.

9 - R. Albert Mohler Jr., "The Briefing: February 13, 2023," Albert Mohler, February 13, 2023, https://albertmohler.com/2023/02/13/briefing-2-13-23/.

10 - Patricia Cowling et al., Exploring the Prevalence of Gambling Marketing Exposure and Associated Harms in Young People and Adults in Great Britain (Bristol: University of Bristol, 2023), 12, https://www.bristol.ac.uk/media-library/sites/business-school/documents/Exploring_the_Prevelance_of_Gambling_Marketing_UoB_CBCNews.pdf.