When Ontario opened its online gambling market in 2022, it told prospective operators that sharing anonymized player data with independent researchers would be one of four “core” responsible gambling requirements. Four and a half years later, that data has never been shared, and it has not even been collected, the Toronto Star reported on Wednesday, November 11. The finding lands less than a month after the same newspaper revealed that iGaming Ontario, the agency that runs the market, shelved its own study of problem gambling rates.
The Star’s investigation, by reporter Brendan Kennedy, rests on internal records obtained through freedom of information requests. One slide from a March 2022 iGaming Ontario presentation to the Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario states that “operators will share anonymized player information and gaming data for the purposes of advancing research related to RG [responsible gambling] and problem gambling.” A June 2023 presentation to the agency’s board described researcher access to player data as a “challenge” that the requirement would address.
An Industry Explanation
iGaming Ontario offered no explanation for the delay and did not directly answer the Star’s questions. The most candid account came from the industry. Paul Burns, president and chief executive of the Canadian Gaming Association, told the newspaper that the agency never had the technical means to collect the data in the way it described in 2022, and apparently still does not. “Like many things in the early days of iGO, it didn’t get done,” he said, describing it as “a case of an organization that didn’t get itself fully automated out of the gate.”
Mr. Burns said operators are not opposed to sharing anonymized data. “You can’t reduce harm if you don’t measure it,” he said. He credited Joseph Hillier, who became iGaming Ontario’s chief executive in September 2025, with progress on centralised self-exclusion and said he expects the same on data collection.
After being shown those comments, the agency said it has “robust data collection, monitoring, and analytics functions in place” and expects a new data platform by the spring that will “modernize how data is collected from operators.” Mr. Hillier and Zee Hamid, the new minister responsible for gaming, declined interview requests, the Star reported. According to the newspaper, the data-sharing pledge appeared on iGaming Ontario’s website as recently as May 2026, based on an Internet Archive snapshot, and has since been removed.
A Pattern of Late Delivery
The data gap is the third strand of a story that has run through the autumn. On October 16, the Star reported that iGaming Ontario commissioned and then shelved a problem gambling prevalence study after early results came in higher than expected. Five days later, CBC News reported estimates from the Alberta Gambling Research Institute that the number of Ontarians showing signs of problem gambling had risen sharply since 2018. The Star’s new piece puts the rise at 0.3 per cent of the population to 0.8 per cent, and says no other province showed a similar increase.
Centralised self-exclusion followed the same arc. Described in 2022 as a key pillar of the responsible gambling program, BetGuard only became operational in May 2026. The Star contacted a dozen Ontario gambling researchers; all said they had never been offered player data. Ryan Forrest, a University of Toronto researcher who led a recent study finding a doubling of emergency room visits for gambling disorders, said he had emailed several times asking for access and “just never heard from anyone.”
What It Means for Poker
Online poker is a small slice of the market the data was meant to illuminate. In September, peer-to-peer poker generated C$6.4 million in revenue from C$130 million in wagers, as we reported last month, less than 2 per cent of the C$416.3 million the whole market produced that month. Poker is also structurally different from casino play: players compete against each other, and operators earn rake rather than winning from players directly. Aggregate monthly figures cannot show how losses are distributed among poker players, how session lengths have changed, or whether the province’s ring-fenced tables concentrate play among a smaller group of heavy users.
Those are exactly the questions researchers said player-level data could answer. Dr. Daniel Myran, a physician and researcher at North York General Hospital, told the Star that the province does not know how many people are gambling at all. iGaming Ontario publishes a count of active player accounts, 2.6 million in its latest annual report, but one person can hold accounts on several sites. Ontario’s six licensed poker brands each run their own accounts, so the same gap applies to poker.
What Comes Next
The agency has given next spring as its target for the new data platform. It has not said when researchers would gain access, on what terms, or whether the shelved prevalence study will be published. Players looking for help now can find the available tools on our responsible gambling page.
Reporting draws on the Toronto Star investigation by Brendan Kennedy, published November 11, 2026 and syndicated by the St. Catharines Standard, and prior OntarioPoker.com coverage. The internal records quoted were obtained by the Star; OntarioPoker.com has not reviewed them independently. The illustration is AI-generated for editorial purposes. Online poker in Ontario is limited to players aged 19 or over who are physically located in the province. Free, confidential help is available 24 hours a day from ConnexOntario at 1-866-531-2600.