Researchers and policymakers have been asking whether online gambling addiction is getting worse in Canada with growing urgency since legal online gambling expanded in 2021. This page looks at what the institutional research actually shows: prevalence trends, which groups are most affected, how different gambling formats compare in terms of risk, and the limits of the data. By the end, you’ll have enough context to assess the current evidence and judge where the numbers are solid and where they’re still contested.
The National Baseline and What “Getting Worse” Actually Measures
To answer whether online gambling addiction is worsening in Canada, you need a fixed starting point to measure change against. Canada’s most recent dedicated national gambling prevalence study provides that starting point, and all later figures get compared to it. But those later surveys use different sampling methods, screening tools, and recruitment approaches. That matters for how you read the numbers, and keeping it in mind will help you draw more accurate conclusions from the data below.
Canada has run two dedicated national gambling prevalence studies: one in 2002 and one in 2018. The 2002 study found that 1.1% of Canadians met the criteria for problem gambling. By 2018, that figure had dropped to 0.6% of the adult population, roughly 156,000 people, with a further 2.7% identified as at-risk gamblers (Williams et al., 2021, Canadian Journal of Psychiatry). That 2018 figure became the national baseline for all later comparisons. The Alberta Gambling Research Institute is currently running a follow-up national population prevalence study. As of the Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction’s November 2025 report, results had not yet been released. The trend from 2002 to 2018 was a 45% drop in overall problem gambling prevalence. Any more recent increase has to be measured against a baseline that was already falling, not rising. That context doesn’t make more recent figures less significant, but it does shape how they should be framed. The methodological differences between the 2018 study and later surveys add another layer to that interpretation, which is covered below.
The 2002 and 2018 national studies used dedicated prevalence survey designs with specific sampling methods and validated screening tools applied to representative population samples. More recent national online surveys and community health surveys use different recruitment methods, different screening tools, and in some cases different target populations. Because those design choices affect who gets captured and how problem gambling is identified, the resulting figures aren’t directly comparable to the 2018 baseline. Gaps between the baseline and more recent estimates should be read as directional signals, likely indicators of the trend, rather than precise before-and-after measurements of change at the population level.
What Recent Canadian Survey Data Reveals About Problem Gambling Prevalence
Two large-scale Canadian surveys conducted in the 2024-2025 window both produced problem gambling prevalence estimates far above the 2018 national baseline of 0.6%. Each survey used an independent sample, an independent research organisation, and an independent fielding process, yet both arrived at figures approaching one in ten participants. The fact that two independent surveys landed so close to each other is the central empirical anchor for any assessment of whether gambling harm in Canada has worsened. The individual figures are covered separately below because the surveys differ in design, but together they produce a stronger directional signal than either one alone.
A 2024 national online survey of 8,211 people in Canada found that 9.9% of participants met the criteria for problem gambling, according to a November 2025 report from the Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction (CCSA). That figure is more than 15 times greater than the 0.6% recorded in the 2018 national study.
Meeting the criteria for problem gambling means a participant’s responses to a standardised screening questionnaire crossed a threshold associated with gambling behaviour that causes recurring harm, to finances, relationships, mental health, or daily functioning, and that the person has difficulty controlling or stopping despite those consequences. The screening instrument itself isn’t described here, but the threshold applied is a recognised clinical marker, not a self-report of subjective distress.
This figure reflects one specific instrument applied to one specific online sample. Online panels tend to over-represent people who engage in digital activities, including online gambling, relative to the general population. So the 9.9% figure shouldn’t be read as a direct national prevalence estimate in the same sense as the 2018 Canadian Community Health Survey figure. It does accurately describe the rate of problem gambling among the Canadians who participated in that survey, and it gives a meaningful signal about harm concentration in the segment of the population most exposed to online gambling products.
Mental Health Research Canada’s 22nd tracking survey of 8,890 Canadians, conducted between October 2024 and January 2025, found that 9.1% of participants were classified as having problem gambling, with concentration among young men and online gamblers. The survey was conducted by Pollara Strategic Insights.
The two surveys, one from the CCSA research stream (n = 8,211) and one from Mental Health Research Canada (n = 8,890), were designed and fielded independently, used different organisations, and covered overlapping but not identical time periods. Both produced a problem gambling prevalence figure within one percentage point of the other. That proximity across independent large samples is stronger directional evidence than either finding alone, because it makes it less likely the result is an artefact of a single instrument or a single fielding method. That said, the aggregate figures from both surveys hide a sharper concentration of harm within specific demographic subgroups, which the next section covers.
The Concentration of Harm Among Young Canadian Adults
The problem gambling rates in recent Canadian surveys aren’t spread evenly across the population. A large share of that burden falls on young adults who gamble online, and the gap between younger and older age groups is one of the most consistently documented patterns in recent Canadian gambling research.
Among young adults aged 18-29 who gambled online, 69.4% met the criteria for problem gambling in the 2024 national online survey, and 23.5% reported experiencing high levels of gambling-related harm. These figures apply to the subpopulation of young adults who gambled online, not to all young adults. The survey also found that about one in three young adults aged 18-29 (32.0%) reported gambling online. That participation rate means the 69.4% problem gambling figure applies to a group that already represents roughly a third of the 18-29 age group, concentrating a large volume of harm within a relatively bounded demographic segment. The data don’t support extrapolating these rates to young adults who didn’t gamble online. The next section shows how much greater this risk is compared to older adults.
The age gap in problem gambling among online gamblers isn’t just a directional difference; it’s documented as a multiplier. Young adults aged 18-29 who gambled online were 6.1 times more likely to meet problem gambling criteria than adults aged 65 and older who gambled online (69.4% versus 11.4%). That multiplier matters when reading aggregate prevalence figures, because any national average will understate the risk concentrated at the younger end of the age distribution and overstate it at the older end. The table below shows the figures behind that multiplier.
| Age Cohort (Online Gamblers) | Share Meeting Problem Gambling Criteria |
|---|---|
| 18–29 | 69.4% |
| 65 and older | 11.4% |
| Risk multiplier (18–29 vs. 65+) | 6.1× |
The Risk Differential Between Online Gambling and Other Formats
Online gamblers meet problem gambling criteria and report gambling-related harm at rates far higher than people who participate in lower-intensity formats like lotteries. This format-level difference is what connects rising aggregate harm figures to a structural shift in how Canadians are gambling, not simply to more people gambling overall. So when assessing whether harm is worsening, you need to break down participation by format, not just track overall prevalence.
The 2024 national online survey of 8,211 people in Canada found that online gamblers were approximately 45.3 times more likely to meet problem gambling criteria than lottery-only gamblers (40.8% versus 0.9%), and approximately 21.1 times more likely to report high levels of gambling-related harm (19.0% versus 0.9%). These multipliers show that aggregate harm figures are driven heavily by format composition. A population that shifts toward online gambling will produce substantially higher harm rates even if total participation stays flat.
| Format | Share Meeting Problem Gambling Criteria | Share Reporting High Gambling-Related Harm |
|---|---|---|
| Online gamblers | 40.8% | 19.0% |
| Lottery-only gamblers | 0.9% | 0.9% |
| Risk multiplier | 45.3× | 21.1× |
The format-level risk difference showed up in youth populations well before the current adult survey data emerged. Elton-Marshall et al. (2016), examining adolescents across Ontario, Newfoundland and Labrador, and Quebec, found that among youth who gambled both online and offline, 36% had scores indicating a potential gambling problem, compared with 8% among offline-only gamblers. Youth who gambled online scored high on problem gambling severity at a rate of 17.4%, versus 1.2% for land-based-only gamblers. The absolute rates in that adolescent sample aren’t directly comparable to the adult figures in the 2024 survey, given differences in age group, screening instruments, and survey period. But the directional pattern is consistent: online participation was associated with substantially higher problem gambling indicators than land-based participation alone, a relationship the adult data now confirms at scale.
Provincial Variation in Online Gambling Participation
Online gambling participation isn’t uniform across Canada. The 2024 national online survey documented meaningful differences between provinces and regions, and the province with the most recently opened competitive commercial online gambling market sits near the top of that distribution. These provincial differences offer one lens for reading how regulatory context and participation patterns relate to each other.
The 2024 national online survey of 8,211 people in Canada recorded the share of respondents in each region who reported gambling online. British Columbia posted the highest rate, followed closely by Ontario, with Quebec in the middle and the Prairie provinces and Atlantic Canada below the national leaders. The figures below show the share of respondents in each region who reported gambling online.
| Province or Region | Share Reporting Online Gambling |
|---|---|
| British Columbia | 22.2% |
| Ontario | 21.5% |
| Quebec | 19.6% |
| Prairie provinces | 17.2% |
| Atlantic Canada | 16.7% |
Ontario launched its regulated iGaming market on April 4, 2022, becoming the first Canadian jurisdiction to allow private operators, including large international companies such as Bet365 and DraftKings, to offer online casino games, sports betting, and poker to residents. That expansion substantially broadened legal access to online gambling in the country’s most populous province.
Canadian research has documented that contacts to Ontario’s mental health and addictions helpline for gambling-related problems increased after the market opened. The Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse and Addiction frames the Ontario market opening as part of the context for observed increases in gambling harm, without asserting a definitive causal relationship between the regulatory change and the harm figures. The provincial participation rates and the harm data in the 2024 survey are coincident observations, recorded in the same period as the expanded market, rather than a confirmed causal sequence.
Co-Occurring Mental Health Consequences
Canadian research consistently finds that problem gambling doesn’t occur in isolation from other mental health conditions. Surveys and clinical studies alike find elevated rates of anxiety, depression, and suicidal ideation among people who meet problem gambling criteria. That’s part of why Canadian public health institutions treat problem gambling as a mental health issue rather than a purely behavioural or financial one. The overlap between gambling harm and psychiatric symptoms shapes how researchers, clinicians, and policymakers think about intervention priorities.
Mental Health Research Canada’s 22nd tracking survey, which classified 9.1% of its 8,890 respondents as having problem gambling, found that people in that group were four times more likely to show symptoms of anxiety and depression than those without problem gambling. The survey documents this as an association between problem gambling status and symptom presence. The available research doesn’t establish whether gambling problems come before the mental health symptoms, follow from them, or develop at the same time. The finding is a population-level correlation observed within the survey sample, not evidence of a causal pathway in either direction.
Adolescents with gambling problems have been found to have significantly higher rates of suicidal ideation and suicide attempts than both non-gamblers and social gamblers, according to findings cited in the November 2025 Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction report. The research describes this as a meaningful elevation rather than reporting a specific multiplier. This pattern places adolescent problem gambling among the youth mental health risk factors that Canadian researchers and public health bodies monitor alongside substance use and mood disorders.
Youth and Student-Population Data From Canadian School Surveys
School-based surveys conducted through Canadian addiction and mental health institutions produce a separate evidence stream from the general-population studies covered earlier. Because legal gambling in Canada is age-restricted, typically to adults 18 or 19 depending on the province, any gambling activity reported by students in Grades 7 through 12 occurs outside the legal framework. That context matters before drawing comparisons to adult problem gambling rates. The prevalence rates below reflect self-reported behaviour among minors, not participation in a regulated market.
The Ontario Student Drug Use and Health Survey (OSDUHS), a CAMH research programme tracking health behaviours among Ontario students in Grades 7 to 12, found in its 2020 cycle that approximately 32% of students reported participating in one or more gambling activities in 2019. Of those surveyed, approximately 4% reported low-to-moderate gambling problems and 2% reported high-severity gambling problems. These figures matter because they show measurable problem gambling severity within a population that can’t legally gamble, reinforcing the youth-vulnerability pattern identified in adult online gambling data. The student figures don’t replicate adult prevalence rates but confirm that gambling harm isn’t confined to legal-age populations.
Across the Canadian research literature, approximately 4 to 6 percent of high school students are estimated to be addicted to gambling. A further 10 to 14 percent are estimated to be at risk of developing an addiction. These figures are drawn from the broader research literature rather than any single named survey, and they indicate that the combined share of Canadian high school students either addicted to or at risk of gambling addiction may reach as high as one in five.
What the Emerging Statistics Canada and Follow-Up Prevalence Data Will and Will Not Settle
The empirical picture on Canadian online gambling harm is still coming together. Two data sources, one recently released and one pending, will shape how the question of whether problem gambling has worsened gets answered in the next research cycle. Treating directional signals from online surveys as equivalent to nationally representative prevalence estimates produces a misleading picture, so it’s worth being clear about what isn’t settled yet.
Statistics Canada released new gambling data from the rapid response component of the Canadian Community Health Survey on February 24, 2026, under the title “Canadian Community Health Survey: Rapid response on gambling, 2025.” The rapid response mechanism exists to address emerging public health issues between full survey cycles, and the 2025 gambling module is the national statistical agency’s first dedicated gambling data collection since the 2018 prevalence study was embedded in the same survey. Reporting on Canadian gambling harm in 2026 and beyond is likely to cite this release as a primary institutional source.
The Alberta Gambling Research Institute is conducting a national population prevalence study as a direct follow-up to the 2018 national study. As of the Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction’s November 2025 report, results had not been released. This follow-up matters because it will use a methodology comparable to the 2018 study, making it the first data source capable of producing a like-for-like answer to whether the national problem gambling rate has risen from the 0.6% baseline recorded in 2018. No other survey conducted since 2018 meets that methodological standard.
Reading Canadian Gambling Harm Data on Its Own Terms
The question of whether online gambling addiction is worsening in Canada has a directional answer but not yet a definitive one, because the methodological gap between the 2018 national baseline and more recent online surveys hasn’t been resolved. Understanding the difference between a general-population prevalence estimate and an online-panel figure, and knowing that harm concentrates sharply within specific formats and age groups rather than spreading evenly, puts you in a much better position to assess any new Canadian gambling statistic without misreading its scope.
