Alberta is betting against its own people.

July 17, 2026

Hon. Dale Nally
Minister of Service Alberta and Red Tape Reduction
Government of Alberta
Edmonton, AB  T5K 2B6

Dear Minister Nally:

I write with deep concern about the Alberta Government's aggressive expansion of sports betting and online casinos this week through the Alberta iGaming Act of May 8, 2026. In opening Alberta to the major gambling companies, you will make Albertans even more vulnerable to the well-documented mental health harms that result from sports betting and other forms of online gambling.

According to the most recent Canadian survey published by the Canadian Centre for Substance Use and Abuse (CCSA), Greo Evidence Insights, and Mental Health Research Canada in November 2025, 9.9% of the surveyed population experience ‘problem gambling’. Among young adults who gambled online, 69.4% met the criteria for problem gambling and 23.5% reported experiencing a high level of gambling-related harms. The Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) in Toronto estimates that for every bettor addicted another five to six persons are negatively affected.

There is no evidence that those numbers will go down if Alberta introduces competition between the foreign-owned betting companies with the resulting advertising. With expanded promotion and marketing, those numbers will only increase.

In your various public statements — I heard you in Toronto at the SBC Summit Canada in May — you said that you will reduce the risk of addiction and problem gambling by requiring the gambling companies to introduce self-exclusion tools and encourage ‘responsible gambling’. Yet unless they are closely supervised, the gambling companies will simply ignore self-exclusion requests and mercilessly squeeze bettors who are vulnerable, because those bettors are the most profitable. ‘Responsible gambling’ is a marketing strategy invented in the UK a generation ago to overcome betting's seedy reputation, and keep bettors betting. There is no evidence anywhere that it reduces the harms.

It would also appear that you have opened Alberta to more predatory offshore gambling sites. Although you have spoken about expanding legal gambling as an antidote to offshore black-market gambling, you make no effort to keep the unlicensed platforms out of Alberta. Indeed, as the investigative reporters at the Toronto Star reported recently, you have licensed a platform, ToonieBet, which is linked to a network of blacklisted, ‘predatory’ sites. As reported, ‘its parent company Soft2Bet is linked to unlicensed sites also targeting Canadians. Some of those sites have already run afoul of European regulators’.

If you were really concerned about the illegal sites, why not work with the federal, other provincial and international governments to block them, without the charade of opening the province to more gambling companies. The UK Gambling Commission leads an international coalition of regulators to take joint action against unlicensed sites.

You and your colleagues tout the economic benefits, but while some jobs are created, most of the betting, high-tech and sport companies are foreign owned so the profits leave the country. Although Alberta will get some taxes from betting revenues, estimates from other countries suggest that those revenues are dwarfed by the social, mental health and economic costs (lower overall economic growth, lowered rates of savings, and loss of jobs) of betting and online gaming. It's short-term gain for long-term pain.

As the World Health Organization, the Canadian Medical Association, the Canadian Mental Health Association, the Canadian Psychological Association, CAMH, CCSA and others recommend, we ask you to adopt a public health approach to sports betting and online casinos. That would include:

• Developing a public-health driven provincial gambling strategy independent from the gambling industry and its enablers in professional sports and the high-tech industries
• Banning advertising, marketing and promotion of gambling
• Regulating the features demonstrated to be the most harmful, such as in-play betting
• Requiring mandatory (not voluntary or industry-supervised) safeguards
• Enhancing prevention and education, with public health programs and school-based curricula along the lines of the anti-tobacco campaigns a generation ago
• Increasing treatment capacity
• Investing in research

Thank you very much for your consideration.

We would be more than happy to meet with you to discuss these concerns.

Sincerely,

Bruce Kidd, OC, OLY, PhD, LLD
Campaign to Ban Ads for Gambling
BanAdsForGambling.ca

Copies to: Hon. Rick Wilson, Minister of Mental Health and Addiction · Hon. Naheed Nenshi, Leader of the Opposition, MLA · Selected media