How Canada Legalized Single Event Sports Betting

Canada legalized single-event sports betting when Parliament passed the Safe and Regulated Sports Betting Act, known as Bill C-218. The bill changed paragraph 207(4)(b) of the Criminal Code to remove the long-standing ban on betting on a single sporting event. This page covers the specific Criminal Code provision that changed, the bill’s path from its first reading in February 2020 to coming into force on August 27, 2021, the carve-out that kept horse racing under separate rules, and how regulatory authority was handed to the provinces and territories. By the end, you’ll have a solid enough grasp of the law and its structure to understand how provincial licensing frameworks connect back to the federal change.

What Bill C-218 Is and What It Changed

Bill C-218, formally titled the Safe and Regulated Sports Betting Act, was a private member’s bill introduced in the House of Commons by Kevin Waugh, the Conservative Member of Parliament for Saskatoon–Grasswood. The bill amended the Criminal Code of Canada to remove the federal ban on betting on a single sporting event or athletic contest, and handed the authority to run and manage that kind of wagering to the provinces and territories.

The Specific Criminal Code Provision Amended

The bill amended paragraph 207(4)(b) of the Criminal Code of Canada. Before the amendment, that paragraph defined a “lottery scheme” under section 207 as excluding “bookmaking, pool selling or the making or recording of bets, or on a single sport event or athletic contest.” That wording made it a federal offence for any provincial lottery scheme to accept a bet tied to the outcome of one game or contest. The amendment removed the reference to “a single sport event or athletic contest” from that exclusion, while leaving bookmaking and pool selling still prohibited. In short: before the amendment, taking a bet on a single game was illegal under federal law. After the amendment, provinces and territories could lawfully run and manage that same bet.

The Shift From Parlay-Only to Single-Event Wagering

Legal sports betting had existed in Canada since 1985, but only in parlay format. That meant a bettor had to correctly predict the outcomes of two or more events on a single ticket to win. Get one leg wrong and the whole ticket was void. Once the amendment took effect, provincial operators could offer bets on the outcome of a single game, match, or contest, settled on that event alone. The change also opened the door to in-play wagering built around a single contest, including proposition bets on individual player or team outcomes and micro bets on specific moments within a game.

The Legislative Journey Through Parliament

Bill C-218 reached royal assent only after roughly a decade of failed attempts to remove the single-event wagering ban from the Criminal Code. Earlier private members’ bills, starting in 2011, had either stalled in the Senate or been defeated at second reading. C-218 also moved forward alongside a competing government-backed bill introduced by the Minister of Justice. A Speaker’s ruling stopped that parallel bill from proceeding, and its key policy content, including horse racing protections, was folded into C-218 instead.

Prior Attempts and Historical Context

C-218 was the third serious attempt to legalize single-event sports betting in Canada. Windsor–Tecumseh NDP MP Joe Comartin introduced Bill C-290 in 2011. It passed the House of Commons with all-party support but stalled in the Senate and died on the Order Paper when Parliament dissolved before the 2015 election. In 2016, Windsor West NDP MP Brian Masse introduced Bill C-221, which was defeated at second reading in the House of Commons by a vote of 156 to 133. By the time C-218 was tabled in February 2020, Parliament had been debating single-event wagering for roughly a decade.

Key Dates, Votes, and Royal Assent

The table below records each formal milestone from introduction in the House of Commons to the date single-event wagering became lawful under provincial authority.

The Parallel Government Bill and How It Was Superseded

While C-218 was moving through the House of Commons, Minister of Justice David Lametti introduced a competing government-backed bill covering the same subject. On February 18, 2021, one day after C-218 cleared its House vote at that stage, the Speaker ruled that the government bill could not proceed while C-218 was still on the Order Paper. Two bills addressing the same question couldn’t advance at the same time. The government dropped its own bill rather than pursue it separately. Substantive elements from that bill, including the protection for pari-mutuel horse race wagering, were folded into C-218 before its second reading and carried through the rest of the process.

The Horse Racing Carve-Out

Bill C-218 removed the Criminal Code ban on single-event wagering, but the drafting deliberately left the existing restrictions on horse racing in place. This exception wasn’t part of the original private member’s bill. It was brought over from the competing government-backed sports betting legislation and added to C-218 before the bill’s second reading in the House of Commons. Pari-mutuel wagering on horse races remains under the supervision of the Canadian Pari-Mutuel Agency (CPMA), an arm of Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada that oversees the integrity of pari-mutuel betting systems across the country. The carve-out exists because horse racing already operates under a long-established federal regulatory regime that Parliament chose to leave untouched.

The Provincial and Territorial Regulatory Framework

Bill C-218 changed the Criminal Code at the federal level, but the amendment itself didn’t authorize any operator to start taking single-event bets. Under section 207 of the Criminal Code, the authority to run and manage lottery schemes, including single-event sports betting, sits with each province and territory. That’s been the case since the 1985 Criminal Code amendments that first divided gaming authority along those lines. When the federal provisions came into force on August 27, 2021, thirteen sub-national jurisdictions each had independent discretion over whether, when, and how to offer regulated single-event wagering. That produced immediate differences in how the change was put into practice across the country.

How Each Jurisdiction Implemented Single-Event Wagering

The table below records each province’s and territory’s chosen approach as of the period immediately following the bill’s coming into force on August 27, 2021.

The Open-Market Distinction and the Question of Private Operators

Bill C-218 did not, on its own, authorize any private sportsbook to accept bets in Canada. The federal amendment only removed the Criminal Code ban. The authority to run and manage single-event betting was then vested in the provinces and territories. Twelve of the thirteen jurisdictions kept a Crown-corporation monopoly model, offering single-event wagering through their existing lottery operators. Ontario is the only jurisdiction to have opened its market to licensed private operators, through a separate iGaming regulatory structure run by the Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario (AGCO), with iGaming Ontario acting as the conduct-and-manage entity that contracts with private operators. Any private sportsbook operating legally in Canada does so under Ontario’s provincial licensing framework, not under federal authority.

Why the Bill Was Passed — The Stated Rationale

Two arguments dominated parliamentary debate on Bill C-218 and ran through committee submissions in both chambers. The first was economic: a single-event wagering market was already operating outside Canadian law, and supporters argued that a regulated framework would pull that activity into taxable, provincially managed channels. The second was about public interest: legalization would bring consumer-protection standards to Canadian bettors and reduce the flow of wagering revenue to organized crime.

The Estimated Illegal Market and Projected Legal Market

Two numbers came up repeatedly throughout the parliamentary record and media coverage. Parliamentary testimony and committee submissions cited estimates that Canadians were wagering upwards of C$14 billion annually through illegal bookmakers and offshore online operators before legalization. Industry analyst reports referenced in both chambers projected that a regulated Canadian sports betting market could reach roughly C$28 billion within five years of legalization. Neither figure is a settled government statistical finding. Both came from stakeholder testimony and analyst projections, not official statistical agencies. Together, they were the main economic evidence supporters used in the House of Commons and the Senate to show the scale of the unregulated market and the potential tax base that provincial and territorial regimes could capture.

Consumer Protection, Organized Crime, and Stakeholder Positions

Three converging stakeholder positions shaped the record before the House and Senate committees examining the bill. A national responsible-gambling advocacy organization submitted formal recommendations to the House of Commons Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights and the Standing Senate Committee on Banking, Trade and Commerce, calling for a regulatory framework built around consumer-protection standards. The reasoning was that bettors who moved into licensed channels could be reached by problem-gambling safeguards that offshore sites didn’t offer. Major North American professional sports leagues jointly pushed for legalization, arguing that illegal wagering on their competitions was already widespread and that a legal Canadian framework would shift that activity into monitored, regulated markets, cutting the revenue flowing to unlicensed operators tied to organized crime. The bill drew cross-party support from the Conservative, Liberal, NDP, and Bloc Québécois caucuses, with supporters from each party framing legalization as a way to displace criminal revenue by giving Canadians a lawful alternative under provincial oversight.

What Bill C-218 Means for Sports Betting in Canada Today

Canada now runs on a patchwork of sports betting frameworks rather than a single national standard, which is a direct result of Bill C-218 shifting authority from federal criminal law to the provinces. Ontario’s open, licensed market operates on fundamentally different terms than the Crown-corporation models running everywhere else. That matters practically for anyone placing a bet or choosing a platform. Horse racing remains carved out under the federal pari-mutuel system, untouched by the reform. Knowing which regime applies to you isn’t just academic. It shapes what operators are legal, what protections exist, and where to find the rules that govern betting in your specific province or territory.