How the Ford government broke a ‘core’ promise to safeguard its online gambling market - Toronto Star

IGaming Ontario vowed to share data to reduce problem gambling. More than 4 years later, it still hasn’t done it and problem gambling’s on the rise.

An industry source said the Ford government didn’t have the ability to collect the data at the time of the 2022 pledge. The new minister responsible for gaming, Zee Hamid, left, declined an interview request.

When Ontario launched its online gambling market in 2022, the government said it would require gambling companies to share anonymized player data with independent researchers.

The purpose was to give researchers high-quality information to study gambling behaviour so that they could recommend the most effective ways of preventing harm.

Four-and-a-half years later, the data still has not been shared. It has not even been collected, a Star investigation has found.

This marks the latest example of the province failing to follow through on promised measures to promote responsible gambling, and comes after the Star revealed the government agency in charge secretly shelved a study intended to track rates of problem gambling.

IGaming Ontario, which runs Ontario’s online gambling market, offered no explanation for why the data hasn’t been shared.

Records show officials discussed a “gag order” after researchers reported problem gambling rates significantly higher than expected.