Supreme Court to Hear Ontario-Alberta Poker Liquidity Case on October 7

The Supreme Court of Canada will hear oral arguments on October 7 in a case that could decide whether Ontario and Alberta's regulated online poker rooms are allowed to share players with markets outside Canada.

The case, Atlantic Lottery Corporation, et al. v. Attorney General of Ontario (Supreme Court file 42141), is an appeal of a November 12, 2025 ruling from the Court of Appeal for Ontario. In that decision, a 4-1 majority held that Ontario's regulated iGaming operators could legally connect their players to international pools under section 207(1)(a) of the Criminal Code, provided iGaming Ontario continues to conduct and manage the province's side of the game. Justice van Rensburg dissented, arguing the proposed model would take gaming activity outside Ontario's borders and outside what the Criminal Code allows.

The appellants pushing back on that ruling are the Atlantic Lottery Corporation, the British Columbia Lottery Corporation and Manitoba Liquor and Lotteries, and Loto-Québec, which joined the appeal in April. The Attorney General of Ontario is the respondent. 

Alberta, which launched its own regulated iGaming market in July, has intervened on Ontario's side, alongside the Canadian Gaming Association, Flutter Entertainment (parent company of PokerStars and FanDuel), and NSUS Group (parent company of GGPoker).

The Supreme Court is not expected to rule from the bench on October 7, and a written decision typically follows months after oral arguments, likely putting a result sometime in early-to-mid 2027.

GGPoker has already secured its Alberta operator licence but has not yet launched commercially there, and officials from both provinces have said they are already working on a memorandum of understanding to pool their own player pools regardless of the Supreme Court's outcome. 

A ruling that upholds the Ontario Court of Appeal would open the door to combining Ontario and Alberta's roughly 21 million combined residents with international networks run by operators such as PokerStars and GGPoker, producing deeper games and larger tournaments than either province can support alone.

Loto-Québec is itself one of the appellants in the Supreme Court case, putting the province in the unusual position of fighting pooled liquidity in court while its own political parties campaign on opening the market to the operators that would benefit from it.

For now, nothing changes for players in Ontario or Alberta. Both markets remain walled off from international pools until the Supreme Court rules, and even a favourable decision would leave real work ahead on player protection standards, oversight, and anti-money-laundering rules before any pooled product could launch. 

Canadian poker sites operating in the regulated space will be watching October 7 closely, since the outcome will shape how competitive Ontario and Alberta's markets can become against the offshore operators many Canadian players already use.