Manitoba Liquor & Lotteries asks courts to block offshore gambling site on behalf of gaming coalition
A coalition of Canadian gaming agencies is hoping an application to stop an offshore betting site from operating in Manitoba sets a precedent in the fight against illegal online gambling.
Manitoba Liquor & Lotteries is seeking an injunction to bar the offshore gambling site Bodog from operating or advertising in the province.
The Crown corporation alleges in an application filed with the Manitoba Court of King's Bench last week that the website bodog.eu and its sister "free play" site, bodog.net, are breaking the law by offering their services in Manitoba, where Liquor & Lotteries has sole authority over gambling.
"Bodog's illegal activities are diverting customers in Manitoba away from MBLL's legitimate operations," it said, referencing PlayNow.com, its online gaming platform. "Significant revenue that would otherwise be generated by MBLL has been diverted to Bodog."
The Crown corporation said in an email it filed the injunction on behalf of the Canadian Lottery Coalition, an advocacy group whose membership is made up of provincial gaming corporations in B.C., Saskatchewan, Quebec, Atlantic Canada and Manitoba.
Will Hill, executive director of the coalition, said the application for the injunction is a first for the coalition, which was formed in 2022 to fight the spread of illegal gambling sites.
"There's really two particular goals here," Hill said. "One, securing an injunction against an illegal operator within Manitoba, but two, validating the coalition's general position on illegal gambling more broadly."
Hill said he hopes the case will provide the coalition with a court interpretation it can use to reinforce similar efforts to crack down on illegal gambling across its members' jurisdictions.
"They're forced to deal with hundreds of illegal operators," he said, complicating "what is a really noble pursuit, quite frankly. The provincial lottery corporations are set up to return 100 per cent of their proceeds to their provinces to benefit provincial priorities."
Bodog.eu allows players to bet money on sporting events and casino games like blackjack and poker. The website says it accepts players from all across Canada, except for those in the provinces of Quebec and Nova Scotia.
An affidavit by a digital forensic analyst, submitted with the court application, says Bodog advertised its "Canadian presence and frequently posted content featuring Canadian teams and players, including those located in Manitoba," on social media.
The application alleges Bodog promotes its platform through "materially false and misleading statements," by representing itself as lawful, safe and trusted, when it's not.
It said the coalition asked Bodog twice to stop making the sites accessible in the province, but that the company has refused to comply.
CBC News reached out to Bodog, but had not received comment on the court filing prior to publication.
Harm reduction, money laundering concerns
The application names as defendants Bodog operator Il Nido Ltd. and Sanctum IP Holdings Ltd., which is listed as the owner of Bodog's Canadian trademark. Both companies are based in Antigua and Barbuda.
Manitoba Liquor & Lotteries says offshore gambling sites often operate through "complex corporate structure" and that it can't ascertain whether other entities are involved in Bodog's operations.
Bodog is not listed as one of the gaming site operators certified to run in Ontario, the only province with a regulated third-party market.
The Canadian Lottery Coalition says data gathered by the market data firm H2 Gambling Capital shows illegal online Canadian gambling revenues going to offshore sites like Bodog jumped almost 40 per cent from 2020 to 2023, to $1.86 billion.
In a sworn affidavit, Hill also cited a new report by FINTRAC, or the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada — a federal financial intelligence unit — which warned about offshore gambling sites potentially being used by drug traffickers to launder proceeds from the sale of fentanyl and other opioids.
On Monday, the Manitoba government announced Manitoba Liquor & Lotteries casinos will report suspicious transaction records to FINTRAC and Winnipeg police to crack down on money laundering.
Spencer Murch, a researcher with the University of Calgary's psychology department who specializes in gambling and addictive behaviours, said offshore sites put people at risk since they're not required to put safeguards in place like voluntary self-exclusion, which lets people ask to be banned from playing.
"If we are serious about harm reduction in the realm of online gambling, we also need to be serious about enforcing bans on illegal offshore gambling," Murch said.
But cracking down on offshore sites is only part of tackling the problem — governments looking to expand legal gambling options must prioritize public health over profit generation, he said.
"We do believe that increasing the rate of online gambling in any province is likely to come along with increases in the number of people experiencing gambling-related problems," said Murch, citing a recent report from a commission of public health experts.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
National Observer
43 minutes ago
- National Observer
A Canadian researcher was 'indispensible' to helping Trump dismantle climate action
A Canadian economist and conservative columnist who recently called Prime Minister Mark Carney a "climate zealot" played a critical role in the Trump administration's push to eradicate US climate rules. Ross McKitrick, an associate professor at the University of Guelph and a senior fellow at libertarian thinktank the Fraser Institute, was one of five co-authors recruited by US Energy Secretary Christ Wright to author a 150-page US Department of Energy (DOE) report that undermined the US government's ability to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. He was "indispensible" to the project, wrote co-author and climate denier Roy Spencer in his blog. The report argues "CO2-induced warming appears to be less economically damaging than commonly believed," and "mitigation policies could prove more detrimental than beneficial." The report was published last week as part of the Trump administration's proposal to repeal the Environmental Protection Agency's Endangerment Finding — the legal mechanism underpinning most US climate legislation. Eliminating the finding, a longstanding goal of climate deniers, lets the government undermine standards that limit emissions, including from oil and gas operations, power plants and landfills. There is a widespread scientific consensus that human activity, mostly burning fossil fuels, is the main driver of climate change. That finding was backed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the European Climate Risk Assessment, and the US's Fifth National Climate Risk Assessment, published during the Biden era. Bill McKibben, the prominent climate scientist, journalist, climate advocate and co-founder of told Canada's National Observer McKitrick's involvement is a rare example of climate denial flowing from Canada to the US. "I suppose it's proof that once in a while the damage goes the other way across the border," he said. If the Trump administration successfully eradicates all US climate measures, the country is projected to emit an extra seven billion tons of greenhouse gases between now and 2030 — like adding an additional 10 Canadas to the world's emissions. A Canadian economist and conservative columnist who recently called Prime Minister Mark Carney a "climate zealot" played a critical role in the Trump administration's push to eradicate US climate rules. McKitrick has been downplaying the impacts of climate change and bolstering the fossil fuel industry for decades. As far back as 2000, he joined a briefing by the so-called "Cooler Heads Coalition," a group with close ties to the oil industry, to criticize the IPCC's Third Assessment Report. "The inclusion of Ross McKitrick, whose work is widely debunked and who isn't even American, tells you just how hard it is to find researchers who will question the overwhelming scientific consensus on carbon dioxide emissions and climate change," said Simon Donner, a climate scientist at the University of British Columbia and a lead author on the most recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report. As the conversation continued around climate change, McKitrick continued to publicly criticize climate science and renewable energy throughout the 2000s and 2010s through his work writing reports for the Fraser Institute and other thinktanks, in news media and as a public speaker. In 2020 he published an op-ed for Troy Media that claims we must ' fight climate extremists before they upend society" and slammed Canada's then-proposed plastic pollution rules for imposing " costs and inconvenience … while doing nothing to fix the [pollution] problem." He remains a prominent voice against climate action, contributing climate-skeptical columns to the Financial Post, the National Post and the oil and gas outlet Energy Now. He also continues to write for conservative thinktanks, including a 2025 report for the Fraser Institute that concludes achieving Canada's net zero goals isn't worth the economic and social cost. A spokesperson for the US DOE said in an emailed statement that McKitrick and his co-authors, the prominent climate contrarians John Christy, Judith Curry, Steve Koonin and Roy Spencer, "represent diverse viewpoints and political backgrounds." Wright, the US energy secretary, wrote in the report's preface that "media coverage often distorts the science" on climate, pushing "many people [to] walk away with a view of climate change that is exaggerated or incomplete. To provide clarity and balance, I asked a diverse team of independent experts to critically review the current state of climate science. "I've reviewed the report carefully, and I believe it faithfully represents the state of climate science today. Still, many readers may be surprised by its conclusions — which differ in important ways from the mainstream narrative," Wright, a former oil and gas executive, continued. In February, Wright described the global effort against climate change as "sinister" and a "tool used to grow government power [and], top-down control, and shrink human freedom' while speaking at Jordan Peterson's Alliance for Responsible Citizenship conference. A few weeks later, he attacked Biden-era climate measures as a "quasi-religious' agenda 'that imposed endless sacrifices on our citizens.' Climate experts have slammed the new DOE report. Ben Sanderson, senior researcher on climate mitigation at the Centre for International Climate Research (CICERO) in Oslo, dismantled the paper in a thread on Bluesky. The "tiny" list of authors and lack of external peer-review undermines the report's credibility, he wrote. (Reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change usually contain contributions from hundreds of authors.) McKitrick and his co-authors presented "minority contrarian viewpoints" by "isolating specific talking points and presenting them as a comprehensive assessment. "Each chapter follows the same pattern. Establish a contrarian position, cherry-pick evidence to support that position, then claim that this position is under-represented in climate literature and the IPCC in particular. Include a bunch of references, most of which don't support the central argument," he wrote. In a Tuesday post on X, McKitrick claimed that he and his co-authors weren't involved in designing the government's push to repeal the Endangerment Finding and "only knew what was in the news." However, the post links to blog posts by his co-authors Curry and Spencer where they address the key policy head-on: Spencer wrote that the group"suspected the Endangerment Finding would be the topic of greatest interest" to the Trump administration when they were commissioned to write the report. Curry wrote that "the looming US policy issue is the EPA Endangerment Finding" and that she hopes the report will break "Breaking the link between energy policy and human-caused climate change".
Edmonton Journal
44 minutes ago
- Edmonton Journal
Man admits to torching $10 million in properties as part of extortion arsons targeting Edmonton South Asian homebuilders
Article content A man who took part in an international conspiracy to terrorize homebuilders in Edmonton's South Asian community has admitted to a raft of crimes, the second plead out in the case known as Project Gaslight. Article content Manav Heer, 20, pleaded guilty in the Court of King's Bench Friday to extortion, arson, conspiracy and using an imitation firearm as part of a criminal syndicate to extort money from around a dozen residential developers and their companies. Article content Article content Article content Heer admitted to participating in arsons that damaged or destroyed a dozen homes worth around $10 million. He sat in the prisoner's box Friday wearing orange and black remand coveralls and did not react as prosecutor Breena Smith read in a 33-page agreed statement of facts detailing his crimes. Article content Article content The Crown says the mastermind of the conspiracy, Maninder Singh Dhaliwal, left Edmonton for India on July 31, 2023, and directed the arsons from the United Arab Emirates, where officials have sought an extradition order. One of the victims was told the threats were linked to Brothers Keepers, the notorious gang founded in British Columbia. Article content Smith said the scheme was part of a 'large Indo-Canadian criminal organization.' Article content Heer, who was 19 at the time of his arrest, was one of five adults and a youth charged with carrying out the plots. He said the group usually began by identifying a seemingly wealthy homebuilder in the South Asian community, who received WhatsApp calls demanding payments as high as $1 million. They were told their homes would be torched and they would be shot if they didn't comply. Article content Article content At least two builders suffered drive-by shootings at their family homes. Article content Article content Heer played a mid-level role in the scheme. According to the agreed facts, Heer recruited drivers to transport 'arson teams' to properties selected in advance, which were then torched with gasoline. He was part of teams that lit two fires at construction projects owned by Victory Homes, as well as a third attempted arson targeting the builder. He also fired an airsoft gun at a security guard keeping watch in a vehicle outside one of the builder's properties, after a co-accused smashed the car's window with a hammer. Article content Heer also confessed to setting fire to a pair of properties owned by Berry Homes Ltd., which spread to two other homes, including a property occupied by a family with three kids. Also targeted were Active Homes and Gill Built Homes. Heer was arrested outside the latter's multimillion-dollar Gill Villa apartment project on Jan. 29, 2024, after police observed Heer and his crew buying a jerry can and filling it with gasoline.
Global News
an hour ago
- Global News
As Trump hikes tariffs, B.C. jobs minister urges Carney to ‘negotiate hard'
British Columbia's minister of jobs and economic growth is urging the federal government to stand firm and 'negotiate hard' when trying to find a solution to 35 per cent tariffs imposed by U.S. President Donald Trump's Ravi Kahlon's advice to Prime Minister Mark Carney and his negotiating team is to keep up what they're doing, and 'find a path forward the best they can.' A statement from Premier David Eby's office says he remains focused on protecting workers and businesses in B.C. from the 'deeply harmful tariffs' imposed by Trump's administration. It says Eby supports the federal government's efforts to get a 'good deal' for Canada, adding that he looks forward to speaking to the prime minister about the situation. 1:09 Scott Moe says Canada should lower or remove counter-tariffs on the U.S. The United States imposed a 35 per cent tariff on all Canadian goods outside the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement on free trade after an agreement couldn't be reached by the Aug. 1 deadline. Story continues below advertisement Several other jurisdictions, including the United Kingdom and the European Union, have reached deals before the deadline. Get breaking National news For news impacting Canada and around the world, sign up for breaking news alerts delivered directly to you when they happen. Sign up for breaking National newsletter Sign Up By providing your email address, you have read and agree to Global News' Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy Kahlon said Trump is 'constantly finding ways to raise the temperature' so 'they can squeeze out the most' from any agreement. He said he believes Carney and Canada-U.S. Trade Minister Dominic LeBlanc are taking the right approach, 'which is keeping their head down, continue to be at the table, continue to find solutions, and not getting distracted by the day-to-day swings of the president of the United States.' He said he would also highlight the importance of the softwood lumber industry for B.C., which is just as crucial as the auto industry is to Ontario. 'The forest sector here in British Columbia should get the same support,' Kahlon said. Both Eby and Kahlon have repeatedly argued that the long-running softwood lumber dispute with the United States should be part of a larger deal. 5:53 CCPA on new Trump tariffs against Canada Brian Menzies, executive director of the Independent Wood Processors Association of British Columbia, said he is 'not very optimistic' that a future deal would also resolve the softwood dispute as the industry already faces combined tariffs and duties of almost 35 per cent. Story continues below advertisement 'We have been at this for eight years now, and there doesn't seem to be enough of a push on the American side to resolve this,' he said. Menzies also favours ongoing negotiations with the United States to resolve the tariff dispute. 'I would say it's better to get a good deal than a bad deal,' he said. 'I'd say right now, 'Do your best to stand up for what's important for Canada,'' he said. Menzies said being 'kowtowed and pushed over' is not good for Canada or the United States. 'People respect people who stand up for what's important to them, and that's the basis for any negotiation,' Menzies said. Menzies noted that any future deal with the United States might not last long, given Trump's temperament. Kahlon agreed. 'We take nothing for granted,' he said. 'It's a sad state for us in Canada to have a partner down south that doesn't honour a handshake, an agreement,' he said. 'It's hard to do business with somebody that is hard to trust when these things come.' Kahlon added that even the United Kingdom and the European Union are not sure if they actually have agreements with the United States. Story continues below advertisement 'So the uncertainty continues,' he said.
