Sorry to hear this, man. I'm totally pre occupied by it too as I have just acquired residency here in the last month as my wife is from here. I like it here and want to stay but now this, plus also my wife is set up here re; jobs etc and wouldn't have the same options elsewhere. I could move but she can't really. It really is a big pain in the behind.

I am not at all surprised to hear there are 2k+ sites. We just have to accept and presume that everything will be off limits. I imagine that any sites that escape in the early days will soon also be banned.

The real question is: how long will this take? If the estimate of 1 year is reasonable then that is not so bad. At least in the estimate of extra revenue, figures were only mentioned for 2016 onwards. Not sure if that has any relevance at all. I dunno, I'm worried. This is the Government ffs they can do this pretty quick if they decide to.

Anyway, depending on the size of one's operation, there is the option of spending some time in that dreaded place called Ontario From downtown Montreal it's only an hours drive on a good day, plus it's a drive involving no border stuff etc. At least it can still be done in the country. Plus there is the option of placing non poker/sports transactions via someone else in a legal area, provided of course they can be trusted with your account! It could be worse, I guess. Have to try stay positive.

Actually, a potential idea for players in the Montreal area would be to acquire some kind of poker house just over the Ontario border where people could grind. Rent could be shared as could ride sharing from Montreal. Commute a few or most days per week and have some over night stays if needed.

wallets are pretty much dead in Canada anyways so this is simply a VPN job

There's a lot of free programs that completely disconnect your internet as soon as a VPN fails, so there's no danger. I know of over 100 guys in the USA who have been playing on stars since BF

Ontario is not much better as a choice IMO. Read this article:

http://www.torontosun.com/2014/11/18...s-sights-sousa

Specifically:

But the minister has also spoken to his counterpart from Quebec who is attempting to expand the province’s reach beyond its borders to regulate offshore igaming.

“We’re looking closely at what they’re doing, but I’m nowhere near determining how we would actually enforce that,” Sousa said Tuesday. “I’m interested. I’m having a joint cabinet meeting with the ministers of Quebec in the coming days, and I look forward to seeing how they’re going to proceed.”

...

The Ontario government is “not so much” motivated by the proceeds, as by the desire to provide an online gambling opportunity with far stricter controls than existing offshore sites, Sousa said.

If the budget initiative is enacted in Quebec mark my words it's only a matter of time before Ontario's government looks at that sweet monopoly quebec has on online gaming and wanting their cut take the same path.

@ Birdwatcher: Not pretty reading. I have no doubt the whole of Canada will eventually follow suit.

As for VPN's: is it really that easy peazy? If so why be so vocal about it? Seems odd to me.

The unregulated sites have the effect of preventing government-approved sites from having a complete monopoly. Otherwise, the rake and taxes of regulated internet poker could approach that of government-approved lotteries.

But the regulated sites can't complete with the free market, so we see proposals like this one to make the unregulated sites unreachable through your ISP. The bigger problem is if this method is adopted in one or more US states (I don't think they have that power) or nationwide.

Could you ask your buddy if they have an idea how long this will take? When are they hoping to have it implemented by?

As a simple citizen I guess nothing can be done to really make a difference.

But is there something we can do to prevent such a law from being passed?

Yes, Pokernews.com removed the article. An earlier article with a less sensational headline is still at Pokernews Canada. My GUESS is that the advertising sites did not like the article and pressured Pokernews.com to remove it.

ty for the link

Not a whole lot new here, but I prefer reading neutral articles like this one rather than from pokernews or whoever, because it's easier for a poker mag/site to have an unrealistic view slanted in either direction (usually in a favorable one, I've found.) It's the same on pokercollectif. A lot of people have a lot to say and a lot of them have obviously looked into it and are bright people, but you find yourself trying to factor in how biased each person might be in either direction. Some are like "don't worry, they can't even do this and if they can it won't be for like 2 years anyway" while others are like "oh this could be any day". It can be confusing and hard to get a handle on it all blah

Yeah, neutral article:

http://affaires.lapresse.ca/economie...-pour-agir.php

It's in French but translates well in google translate.

Just as likely is that no one at PokerNews.com was smart enough to know at first that Quebec isn't all of Canada, just one province in it, and not even the most populous one. So besides being sensationalist, it was just plain wrong.

espace jeux is worst site i played at literaly, no wonder why they just have 10% of the market with all the exposure they have

im already abroad to grind, best decision of my life

Good article highlighting the Mohawk scenario.

Pokerstars/Amya with their lingo at the end. Grrrrrrrr

http://www.flushdraw.net/news/quebec...ing-blacklist/

Zero TV ads (in English at least). Actually, don't know if I've ever seen any ad anywhere. No one in Montreal who I've casually talked to about poker (including many francophones) knew they could play online through Lotto Quebec!

there are tons of ads

Yeah for lotto. But for poker? I haven't seen them.

https://www.reddit.com/r/vpnreviews

i guess its not specifically for poker yeah

all those vpns are terrible for poker

Looks like they are going ahead with this

http://www.cjad.com/cjad-news/2015/0...nline-gambling

Quebec to forge ahead to block online gambling
Posted on 7/9/2015 4:34:00 PM by Angelica Montgomery


Quebec says it still plans to move forward with its promise to block the gambling websites it considers to be illegal, and that take business away from the state-owned Loto-Quebec site Espacejeux.

In their budget last March, the Liberals said they would try to change the law by next year.

So far, there is no new legislation in sight, but the finance minister's press attaché, Andrée-Lyne Hallé says their plans haven't changed.
"We will follow-up on the measures announced in the budget," she said in an e-mail.

Under the Couillard government plan, Loto-Quebec would provide cable distributors with a list of websites that they should block public access to.
Since the Loto-Quebec site is the only one Quebec recognizes as being legal, once the others are eliminated the government estimates the crown corporation will bring in an extra $13.5 million next year, and $27 million the year after that.

But, the initiative may not be so simple to craft.
The chair of a working group that had been hired by the government to study online gambling says they looked at this option and discarded it because it was impractical - both from a technical and legal point of view.

"We know very, very well we have several child pornography sites, and even then we are not blocking them out. It's extremely difficult, and it's easier said than done," says University of Montreal professor Louise Nadeau.
She says Italy already tries to block illegal sites, with limited success - it is too easy to create new websites.
"They're having a lot of difficulty," she says.

On top of this, Quebec may eventually need to defend the option on legal grounds.
Canada's legislation on the subject pre-dates the Internet, and Nadeau says some might question whether the sites are indeed prohibited by law.
As well, the telecommunications sector is under federal jurisdiction.

And, at least one commentator is already arguing that the move would be a strike against the nation's free and open society.

"The open Internet in Canada would be placed at risk of unprecedented government intervention into how Internet providers manage their networks and what sites Canadians are able to access," University of Ottawa professor Michael Geist wrote in The Tyee, an online publication based in British Columbia.

Nadeau says ploughing past these legal hurdles could be too cumbersome, and costly, to make the measure worthwhile.
"I would suspect that the constitutional lawyers would have a nice battle and would probably end up paying a lot of income tax."

lol they basically admit that

1: the sites are probably not "illegal" by any means

2: they're gonna have to workaround somehow forcing ISPs to do what they want even if its federal and out of their power

3: all of this will probably not be worth it



weeee

update....Bill 74 making its way through Quebec's legislative process

http://montreal.ctvnews.ca/proposed-...rnet-1.2843353

Basically, yeah. About a month or two before the Gatineau, QC poker room opened, there was a huge police sweep of all of the underground poker rooms in Ottawa (the capital is near Gatineau). They systematically removed all of the competition prior to the grand opening.

Canada loves its monopolies on healthcare and gambling, two very profitable industries.

I won a package on Espace Jeux a few weeks ago, tickets to an hockey game and I met with a few Loto-Quebec/Espace Jeux officials. They mentioned all that.

Their goal is to get the ISP to block sites, all poker, casino and sports betting. But even if that does not work, they will still ask and get most of the major site to comply and stop offering services in Quebec.

The also realize their own platform is a joke and their goal is to stop operating and licence instead. So in the very near future, I would expect the Espace Jeux site to stop offering poker and sports (and maybe even casino) and see pokerstars.qc or 888.qc start operating. The guy from Loto Quebec mentioned those two sites by name. And it wouldn't be both, it would be only one, they don't want to licence everybody, but just pick a single provider.

They want to do the same thing for sports betting, but I am not familiar with the big players that could operate in Quebec.

The other big thing he mentioned is that they plan to add Ontario to their player pool (right now, it's Quebec, BC and Saskatchewan). So if that happens, I would expect the government from those provinces to go thru the same thing Quebec is doing and either forcing ISP to stop unlicensed site or ask the majors providers.

So, as an Espace Jeux player, playing against the same players I have now, but on Stars software plus adding the Ontario players. It would be a pretty sweet deal. But I sure would miss the occasional massive MTT on Stars with the rest of the world.