Alberta is moving to support international shared liquidity in the Ontario online poker case, adding a provincial government voice to a fight over whether regulated poker sites can accept players beyond Canada. According to pokerfuse, counsel for Alberta’s attorney general plans to present oral arguments at the Supreme Court hearing and argue against the appeal that seeks to block international player pooling.
The immediate dispute is over whether Ontario and Alberta, the only two Canadian provinces with regulated commercial online gaming markets, can move from ring-fenced player bases to a wider pool. The longer-term prize is more ambitious: approval for province-regulated operators to accept international players.
As reported in July, the Supreme Court set the case down for arguments on Oct. 7. The hearing comes after Ontario’s Court of Appeal ruled in November 2025 that the province could legally allow players to compete with people outside Canada, so long as Ontario retained full control over the operation under section 207(1) of the Criminal Code.
That ruling was a 4-1 decision, and Chief Justice Michael Tulloch wrote that the majority’s reading of the law allowed Ontario’s proposed model to stand. The court also said the internet had made it difficult to keep Canadians off offshore gaming sites, while bringing play inside the regulated system could improve public safety by reducing risks such as fraud and addiction.
The appeal reached the Supreme Court after lottery operators from other provinces, including British Columbia and Manitoba, challenged the Ontario decision. A separate report by Conventus Law said Alberta officially intervened in the case in April, reflecting its interest in preserving the option to share liquidity with Ontario and, eventually, with international jurisdictions.
Ontario’s current iGaming system, launched in April 2022, remains a closed-liquidity model in which players can only compete with others physically in the province. Alberta launched its own regulated market in July under similar rules, and pokerfuse said the province has about one-third of Ontario’s population.
The same report said Flutter and NSUS, the owner of GGPoker, are strongly behind the idea of international player pooling. The Supreme Court arguments are not expected to produce an immediate answer, but they will feed into the final ruling on whether regulated online poker in Canada stays provincial or opens to cross-border play.
