The Mohawk Council of Kahnawà:ke (MCK) based in Quebec, Canada is taking iGaming Ontario and the province’s attorney general to court, saying the new online sports betting market is illegal and unconstitutional.
“MCK has facilitated, conducted, and safely regulated gaming activities on behalf of the Mohawks of Kahnawake for decades,” they wrote in a statement. “This new regime ignores their expertise in the gaming sector, and will result in the loss of significant revenue to the community of Kahnawake.”
The MCK contend that by not involving the tribe in the process of managing iGaming, it has taken away money from them.
“Until these actions were taken, we were operating legally, safely and successfully across Canada. To be shut out of Ontario – by far the largest province in Canada – will have devastating effects on a source of income that has supplemented programs and services in our community for the last two decades,” the statement read.
iGaming Ontario launched in April and Ontario was the first province In Canada to allow online gambling on casino games and sports through websites and apps from third-party operators.
Eric Doucet, an attorney for MCK, said the operation of iGaming is flawed.
“We can look at certain criteria. For example, whether or not the province owns the platform, whether or not the province is making any of the key decisions, whether or not it’s responsible for compliance, whether or not it’s responsible for retaining suppliers, and whether or not the province is the primary beneficiary of the scheme,” Doucet said. “When looking at Ontario’s reinterpretation of ‘conduct and manage,’ that’s not what we’re seeing. In our view, it’s really the operator. What they’ve done is they’ve registered operators to essentially do the conducting and the managing of the lottery schemes for them.”
The government contends that when It created iGaming it was with the intention of establishing a “safe, legal, and competitive online gaming market.”
iGaming Ontario said it would have no comment because it was a pending legal matter.
