CANADA Law and Practice Contributed by: Danielle Bush and Matthew Kelleher, McCarthy Tétrault LLP
There are no residency requirements for persons applying for registration. Each applicant will, however, be required to pass a risk assessment and provincial regulators may take a position on what constitutes “honesty and integrity” that would preclude the reg- istration of an applicant that, in the regulator’s view, has not complied with Canadian law. 4.4 Availability of Licences Licences per se are not available in Canada. In every instance, a private gaming company must enter into a services agreement with the applicable Provincial Gaming Operator to provide that entity with gaming services. Generally speaking, the Provincial Gaming Operators have kept the number of suppliers they deal with quite low. Once a supplier has an agreement with a Provincial Gaming Operator, it must then apply for registration by the applicable gaming regulator as a gaming service supplier or, in the case of facilities such as casinos and bingo halls, a gaming opera- tor. This model has changed in Ontario to the extent that the province is registering an unlimited number of private companies as online gaming operators and online gaming service suppliers. 4.5 Duration of Licences The duration of licences varies from province to prov- ince and depends on the nature of the registrations, but all registrations will be linked to the registrant’s continued relationship with the applicable Provincial Gaming Operator. For example, the AGCO offers igaming operators the choice of a one-year or a two- year term for their registration, but the registration will terminate automatically upon termination of their agreement with iGO. 4.6 Application Requirements Each province has its own process for applying for gaming operator and supplier registrations but they are relatively similar. Generally, in order to be regis- tered as an operator or supplier, a company must complete two forms, an application for registration and an enterprise disclosure form, and have all its directors and officers complete and submit personal disclosure forms. The same process is then required of all shareholders of the applicant who hold more than 5% of the shares of the applicant.
The initial risk assessment involves the review of an applicant’s completed application materials as well as information obtained based on a standard back- ground check. This information is evaluated based on five criteria, which are considered key indicators of an individual’s or business’s appropriateness to be registered. The five criteria related to businesses (eg, suppliers) applying for a gaming registration are:
• honesty and integrity; • financial responsibility; • compliance with the law; • registration type; and • financial gain from registration. 4.7 Application Timing
Typically, an application for a provincial gaming opera- tor registration will take a minimum of three months and may take up to six months to complete. The time- line for service supplier registrations may be shorter depending on the nature of the registration. For exam- ple, all individuals working in casinos must be regis- tered. These registrations are relatively quick, taking between one and two months. 4.8 Application Fees The fees for applications for registration vary by prov- ince and are also dependent on the nature of the reg- istration being sought. As an example, an application to obtain an operator registration in Ontario costs CAD100,000 plus any additional investigation charges that the AGCO incurs in processing the application. The cost of those investigations can be quite high and is impossible to predict ahead of time. To date, the highest investigation seen was CAD80,000. See 4.9 Ongoing Annual Fees . 4.9 Ongoing Annual Fees Ongoing annual fees vary by province and by type of registration, and may change on an annual basis at the discretion of the applicable provincial govern- ment. The AGCO operates on a cost recovery basis and so has recently started issuing invoices to regis- tered operators for the costs incurred by the AGCO to date in regulating Ontario’s online gaming market. The amount of the invoices appears to be quite stand- ard, generally running at around CAD200,000 per site. Operators operating more than one site will pay the
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