We told them this would happen.

In April 2021, a year before a single legal bet was placed on a privately operated gambling website in Ontario, the Mississaugas of Scugog Island First Nation submitted our concerns to the province. We said that the new iGaming framework had to balance consumer demand with harm prevention, and that responsible gaming had to be built in from the get-go, not bolted on as an afterthought.   

In August, the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) published the evidence of what happens when a government ignores that advice.

 The survey’s findings

CAMH’s survey on student drug use and health in Ontario is the longest-running school survey of teenagers in Canada. The 2025 edition drew on anonymous responses from 11,108 students in Grades 7 to 12 at 246 schools. It found that 12 per cent of students had gambled online in the past year, up from eight per cent in 2023 — a 50 per cent increase. One in five students had gambled in some form. It also found that online sports betting by students has risen tenfold since 2019 to 10 per cent.

All these students are below the province’s legal gambling age. As CAMH investigator Hayley Hamilton put it, despite age restrictions, “students are finding a way to gamble.” They are also in an age group under some of the greatest strain in modern society. The same survey found 46 per cent of students reported moderate-to-serious psychological distress.

The survey’s most damning number is not even about gambling, but advertising. More than 80 per cent of students said they had seen or heard an online gambling ad in the past month. Nearly a quarter saw one every day.

This is the market working as designed. Some 48 operators run 83 online casino and betting websites in Ontario — one of the most competitive regulated markets on the continent. Operators compete for attention, attention is purchased with advertising and advertising does not verify age. Why would it without a legal incentive?

Saturation, not targeting

Our First Nation fought hard to remove athletes and celebrities from gambling ads and, in 2024, the Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario acquiesced and passed a regulation to that effect. The........

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