Opening the Online Market: A Timeline of Regulated Online Gambling in Canada's Provinces and Territories, 2004-2026

Canada has no national online gambling market. Each province decides whether to offer online gambling through a government operator, to license private operators, or neither, and the result is a sequence of separate launches spread over two decades. This study compiles a dated, sourced event list (43 events) and a jurisdiction summary for all 13 provinces and territories, covering government online lottery and casino launches, the opening of private operator markets in Ontario and Alberta, the transition rules applied to operators previously active without a provincial licence, and related federal and court events. Government online casino gaming arrived over almost 13 years, from British Columbia in July 2010 to Newfoundland and Labrador in June 2023; Prince Edward Island approved but did not launch one, and no territory has one. Ontario took 203 days from opening registration to market launch and gave previously unlicensed operators until 31 October 2022 to exit; Alberta took 181 days and set a transition limit of 13 October 2026, 92 days after launch. Published information on what happened to unlicensed operators after each deadline is thin and largely second-hand. The dataset records date precision and source tier for every event. Files: Smith_2026_Canada_online_gambling_timeline.pdf (paper, with full event list in Appendix A); canada_online_gambling_timeline_events.csv (43 events with date, date precision, jurisdiction, event type, source tier and URL; UTF-8); canada_online_gambling_timeline_jurisdictions.csv (13 rows, one per province or territory). NR means not reported in sources reviewed. Corrections are welcome and will be released as new versions.