Canadian sportsbetting legislation moves to Senate

The C-290 Private Member's Bill was introduced into the House of Commons in February by Joe Comartin, a member of the left-leaning New Democratic Party and the representative for the Windsor-Tecumseh electoral district, and would repeal the Criminal Code section prohibiting betting on a single race, fight, sporting event or athletic contest.

According to a report from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), the proposed measure would see individual provinces permitted to decide whether to allow single event betting whereas now they can only offer multi-game parlay betting such ProLine in Ontario.

However, C-290 is now expected to come up against a wave of opposition in the Senate, which must pass the measure in order for it to become law. The CBC reported that it is anticipating that a majority of Conservative and Liberal members will vote against the proposed measure, which would mark the first time the Upper Chamber has rejected legislation unanimously passed by members of Parliament.

“I've talked to people individually who indicate that they're going to vote against it,” said Norman Doyle, the Conservative Senator representing the province of Newfoundland and Labrador. “I'm thinking that we probably have enough people in the Senate to kill it.”

The Canadian Senate is on holiday next week and Comartin’s legislation is not scheduled for a vote until November 22 although some members have intimated that they do not expected to pass judgment on C-290 until early in December.

“There's a significant number of us [opposed to the legislation],” said Linda Frum, a Conservative Senator for Ontario. It's not a handful. The opposition to this is more significant.”

Numerous professional sports leagues including the National Hockey League (NHL) are opposing Comartin’s legislation and argue that allowing single game wagering could open a Pandora's Box of match-fixing and social problems associated with gambling.

“We firmly believe that legalized sportsbetting threatens to compromise that integrity and that the single game betting scheme that Bill C-290 seeks to decriminalise poses a particularised and unique threat in that regard,” read a statement from the NHL.

“Such wagering poses perhaps the greatest threat to the integrity of our games since it is far easier to engage in match-fixing in order to win single game bets than it is in cases of parlay betting [as currently exists in Canada] where bets are determined on the basis of multiple game outcomes.

“If single game sportsbetting becomes a publicly fostered and sponsored institution, then the very nature of sports in North America [including in the National Hockey League] will change and we fear it will be changed for the worse.”