The coalition of Canadian crown lottery corporations has rebranded as the Canadian Alliance for Regulated Gaming (CARG) and is seeking new members from elsewhere in the industry as it focuses on promoting safer play and regulated gaming.
The organization formerly known as the Canadian Lottery Coalition announced on Monday its official repositioning as CARG, a national, formally incorporated, not-for-profit industry association representing members of the legal and regulated gambling industry.
CARG said the new name reflects Canada’s fast-changing gaming landscape.
“With the rapid evolution of this industry in Canada, there are increasingly complex policy challenges that are no longer just provincial in nature, but national,” Canadian Alliance for Regulated Gaming Executive Director Molly Cormier, who was named to the role under the coalition’s previous name in April, told Canadian Gaming Business in an interview by phone on Tuesday.
“Our members felt that they needed a national voice and a national platform to represent them. You will start to see a lot more visibility from us.”
What was the Canadian Lottery Coalition?
The Canadian Lottery Coalition was formed in 2021 as a partnership between numerous Canadian crown corporations, all of which oversee the only recognized authorized iGaming platform in their respective provinces. At the time of its transition to CARG, its membership consisted of:
- Atlantic Lottery Corporation
- British Columbia Lottery Corporation
- Loto-Québec
- Manitoba Liquor and Lotteries
Alberta Gaming, Liquor and Cannabis (AGLC) was a founding member, but left in early 2024 as Alberta began to explore legalizing and regulating commercial online sports betting and casino gaming, which it launched in July 2026. Lotteries and Gaming Saskatchewan was also a member until December 2025, when it took the decision to step away.
No Ontario government entity has ever been a member of the coalition.
Lottery coalition’s prominent recent efforts
When Cormier joined the association, she vowed to address gaps in federal legislation and regulation, respond to the proliferation of illegal online gambling websites across Canada, and strengthen collaboration with governments, regulators and industry stakeholders.
The CLC has been active in several capacities in recent years, including:
- Successfully lobbying a Manitoba court to ban offshore operator Bodog from doing business in the province
- Supporting Bill S-211, the National Framework on Sports Betting Advertising Act, which passed the Senate last fall and has received strong backing so far in the House of Commons
- Appealing in the Supreme Court against an Ontario court opinion that deemed it would be legal for Ontario to offer international liquidity for peer-to-peer gaming like online poker and daily fantasy sports
What will the Canadian Alliance for Regulated Gaming do?
Cormier told Canadian Gaming Business that while the Canadian Alliance for Regulated Gaming will continue to be active with legal strategies, its core focus is on advocacy and ensuring that public interest leads policies that affect the gaming industry and Canadians participants.
In its statement on Monday, the Canadian Alliance for Regulated Gaming said that it has numerous mandates, including:
- Providing a unified national forum for Canadian gaming collaboration, research, public education, and policy engagement
- Working with governments, regulators, industry stakeholders, and communities to advance public-interest policies
- Promoting player health, strengthening consumer protection
- Supporting effective legislation, regulation, and enforcement
- Addressing challenges including emerging products like prediction markets
Cormier specifically noted things such as curbing the illegal market and ensuring responsible advertising as focuses.
“We see operators targeting residents in provinces where they’re not licensed and pushing them to their international sites,” she noted. “I do find that others in the industry tend to only focus on offshore operators, but I would hope that people would readily agree that is activity that’s causing consumer confusion in Canada about what’s legal and what’s not.”
CARG on hunt for new members
While its current membership is limited to government gaming corporations in provinces that have not opened up a regulated, commercial iGaming market, the Canadian Alliance for Regulated Gaming wants to expand both its membership and its horizons.
“We’re in the process of engaging additional organizations who may want to become a part of that from across, specifically, the legal and the regulated ecosystem for gaming in Canada,” Cormier told Canadian Gaming Business.
“It’s not limited. We’re very open to welcoming partners if they have a stake in the industry, whether they’re operators, regulators, suppliers or vendors, consultants.”
The only non-negotiable, she stressed, is that any would-be members of the Canadian Alliance for Regulated Gaming must be committed to the regulated market in Canada. That means no offshore operators and, ostensibly, none who flout certain provinces’ closed-market models.
“We mentioned advertising targeting residents of a province where that operator is not licensed and pushing them to play on an international site,” Cormier added. “Any one of our members or potential members needs to be against that.”
Cormier cited comments made by Alberta Minister Dale Nally at G2E last week, in which he said he would explore “every possible avenue” to crack down on any remaining unlicensed operators in the province.
“I was happy to hear him say that because there are many tools at our disposal that have not been leveraged,” she said. “That’s one of the main parts of the mission of the Canadian Alliance for Regulated Gaming, so it sounds like we’re on the same page.
“We’d love to have them join us in that fight.”
Multiple iGaming models, one Canadian gaming industry
Cormier emphasized that although crown lottery corporations are the founding members of the Canadian Alliance for Regulated Gaming, the coalition does not advocate for any specific gambling market model, whether it’s a governmental operator monopoly or an open market like Alberta and Ontario.
For instance, although Loto-Québec is a member, the Canadian Alliance for Regulated Gaming has no official stance on what the Quebec election might mean for iGaming expansion in the province.
“According to the Criminal Code in Canada, it’s up to a province to choose what that market model looks like,” Cormier acknowledged. “Those are matters for provincial governments and regulators. Where you will see us advocate is on what that market looks like in terms of serving the public interest in the best possible way.
“Our focus is on ensuring Canadians are protected regardless of the model. That’s the key question. The purpose of this organization, everything we do, is the public interest and consumer protection and player health, and ensuring that there’s effective enforcement and that we can maintain public confidence in this industry in Canada.”
