Unmoved Canadian Courts Back Offshore T&Cs

[Betfair]

Even as Canada’s provinces rush to debut their own online gambling sites, Canadian courts continue to maintain their disinterest in the activities of a legion of private operators.
The Ontario superior court of justice recently upheld the decision by a divisional small claims court that a gambler could not prevent the Isle of Man- based PokerStars from collecting the money she lost playing poker on its website.

The plaintiff, Clotilde Berube, sought to argue that the company’s terms, which place the onus on the gambler
to be aware of the legal situation, were invalid due to the unlicensed status of the operator in Canada.
The court found that unless Berube could prove that the company was operating illegally, its terms and conditions continued to be enforceable despite a formal lack of approval to operate in the Canadian market.

Adding insult to injury the Ontario court, in addition to throwing out her case, ruled Berube would have to pay
her poker debts – a mere $980 - to the operator in addition to the costs of the appeal.

While noting the case was very far from being a legal watershed, local legal expert Danielle Bush explained
the “laissez faire” attitude of the courts to approaching offshore operators is “symptomatic of the approach that Canada has always taken”.

“The possibility of actually getting a conviction is infinitesimally small,” local legal expert Danielle Bush
explained. “It is not worth spending any of your time, or very small budget as a law enforcement agency, to go after these people.”
A similar case in the United States also saw two Ohio residents have their case against the Gibraltar- based PartyGaming dismissed on identical grounds, but only after their petition had completed a journey all the way to the court of appeals.

Currently in Canada the only operators sanctioned by the government are the provincial lotteries the second of which, Lotto Quebec, has just launched its online gambling site. Meanwhile Ontario, which is country’s most populous province, has opened a consultation looking at the possibility of including greater private operator input in its plans to open an online site.

Following uneven results, including an inauspicious debut for British Columbia Lottery Corporation’s Playnow.com, there have been question marks over how successful the government sites will be, with a number of provinces turning their back on corporation plans. Still, major argument used by the lottery corporations to justify their online forays has been that lotterysanctioned
offerings will protect players by keeping them away from unsanctioned websites owned by offshore operators.

But Bush said the government sites will struggle to lure away Canadians who “not really likely to stop” from offshore sites, although she conceded the corporation’s offerings may appeal to the more timid online spenders.
She said: “You may see a new market of people that did not feel safe on the offshore sites, but will use the government sites.”

Meanwhile, offshore operated sites will continue to dominate the Canadian landscape. Joe Kelly, a professor of business law at Buffalo College in New York said that unless prosecutors are willing to open proceedings where operators are domiciled, they are largely protected by the wording of user agreements.
Kelly told GamblingCompliance: “If I were an offshore operator, what I would do when I see this case is not
only smile, but then make sure that I incorporate this language.”