Online gambling a sure bet for Ottawa's coffers

There was a terrific piece on 60 Minutes Sunday, in conjunction with an investigation by the Washington Post, examining cheating in the world of online poker.

Not everyone will be shocked to learn of cheating - call it fraud - in activities that fly under the legal radar.

Telling, at least here, was that the trail leads right to the Kahnawake Mohawk reserve, just south of Montreal.

Internet gambling operations handling more than $18 billion a year - and growing every month - operate out of the reserve while our government stands by, terrified to intervene and enforce the law. Everyone remembers nearby Oka in 1990. An on-camera interview with a spokesperson was blunt. He said the Kahnawake are "not Canadians'' but independent people and not subject to Canadian law.

Fine, fine. So the time will never be better than right now to change the law and make Internet gambling - and sports betting, while we're at it - fully legal across the country. We could legalize it, regulate and tax it, the way Britain did in 2004; first year's revenue in the U.K. was more than £1.5 billion.

With governments scrambling for tax revenues, this would be a relatively painless windfall. Companies operating on the shady side of the law could operate out in the open, pay taxes and sponsor events. That's what happens in Britain now.

Gamblers will gamble, whether it's legal or not, but they would prefer to bet with legal, regulated companies. For one thing, this kind of online poker fraud could be addressed and punished openly, instead of handled secretly, as is happening in the cases at the centre of the WashPost/60 Minutes story.

Since Ottawa is scared to beat the Kahnawake betting operations, it should join them instead - and beat them to the billions of dollars available. Make it legal, set up the regulating framework and watch the money pour in.

In these economically turbulent times, it makes nothing but sense to profit legally from an activity that is both here to stay and is growing every year.

We already allow most forms of gambling and people can't be stopped from doing it on the Internet now. So step up and do it right. Rake a square game of online poker, if that's what people want to play. Allowing single-game sports betting also would provide revenues that could go to everyone from amateur sports to the pro events on which a majority of betting will take place.

This decision is both so obvious and so far overdue that it should be a no-brainer. Even for Ottawa.

Dave Perkins, Toronto Star