Right now, from your phone, you can bet on who wins the next federal election. You can bet on whether the Bank of Canada cuts interest rates. You can bet on celebrity divorces, weather events, which country the next Pope comes from… and obviously every sport imaginable.
And none of that even sounds weird anymore. That’s the problem.
Because here’s Canada’s gambling reality that blew my mind: the last time Statistics Canada measured this, 64% of Canadians aged 15 or older had gambled in the past year. That was 2018. Before single-event sports betting was legal. Before prediction markets. Before any of what we’re about to talk about. I’m guessing it’s way more than 64% now.
A 2025 Mental Health Research Canada survey found 9.1% of respondents who gamble classified as problem gamblers, up dramatically from the roughly 2% measured by Statistics Canada in 2018, so this is potentially a crisis in the making.
Ontario alone saw $98.3 billion in total wagers in 2025. One province.
But here’s the thing… half of what I just listed, most people wouldn’t even call gambling. So where exactly is the line? And what if I told you it’s been deliberately erased?
I’m concerned
Over the last few years, your investing app has started looking more and more like a casino. And I want to talk about why.
This isn’t a lecture about gambling being bad. I love a good poker game with my friends. I’m a big believer in adults being able to make their own choices. But I look at financial decisions for a living, and what I’m seeing right now is a system that’s been engineered to blur one very specific line. The line between a calculated investment and a coin flip.
And most people don’t even notice it’s gone.
The Prediction Market Explosion
Let’s start with the newest player in this space, because it’s the one that perfectly illustrates how blurry this has gotten.
Prediction markets. Platforms where you buy a contract that pays out if you’re right about a future event. Who wins the election? Will the Fed raise rates? Who wins the Super Bowl?
Now if that sounds a lot like options trading… it’s because it is. You’re buying a contract that pays out based on a future outcome. The only difference is the underlying asset. And that’s exactly how these platforms avoided gambling regulations. They told regulators it was a financial tool, not a bet. The CFTC bought it and started regulating them as derivatives exchanges. Whether you buy that distinction is another question entirely.
In the US, this has exploded. Polymarket’s presidential election market alone generated over $3.7 billion in trading volume. And Robinhood, one of America’s biggest retail brokerage, launched prediction markets and it became their fastest-growing product ever.Over 12 billion contracts traded in 2025. Their CEO called it the beginning of a “prediction market supercycle.”
And then a few weeks ago, the US and Israel struck Iran. Within hours, over $529 million was being wagered on Polymarket on contracts tied to the timing of the strikes. Six freshly created accounts made roughly $1.2 million by betting on the exact date of the attack. Most of those wallets were funded hours before the first bombs fell. People are now making money betting on wars. Let that sit for a second.
Now here’s why this matters to you as a Canadian. Polymarket and Kalshi aren’t technically legal here. In 2025, Ontario’s securities regulator determined that Polymarket’s contracts violated a ban on binary options and were therefore illegal. And yet, Polymarket currently hosts over 170 active markets specifically about Canada… who wins our elections, what the Bank of Canada does, you name it. Ontario is the only province that even tried to block it. Everywhere else? Wide open.
And the door isn’t just cracking. It’s swinging. In April 2025, Interactive Brokers launched prediction markets in Canada. You can now bet on Bank of Canada rate decisions from a brokerage account. Canada’s not debating whether this arrives. It’s already here.
The House Always Wins (The Government)
Now here’s where it gets really uncomfortable for Canada specifically.
In 2021, Bill C-218 received Royal Assent, legalizing single-event sports betting. Every province raced to launch online platforms. Ontario went furthest and opened the market to private operators. The result? Ontario’s private iGaming market generated over $10.2 billion in total gaming revenue in its first three years. The province alone collected over $800 million in tax revenue in 2025.
The same government that runs anti-addiction campaigns is now marketing gambling to you. They’re your regulator and your bookie. The dealer telling you to know when to fold while sliding you more chips.
And then there’s the celebrity machine. After legalization, Wayne Gretzky and Connor McDavid were doing BetMGM commercials together. Auston Matthews repping Bet99. The Great One himself telling you every bet has “a potential for greatness.”
CBC’s Fifth Estate tried to ask them about the deals. Gretzky and McDavid wouldn’t talk. Matthews said, “I don’t think I’m going to get into it much, honestly.” Guys being paid millions to talk about betting, and they won’t talk about talking about betting.
Ontariobanned athlete endorsements in iGaming advertising as of February 2024. But here’s the loophole: athletes can still appear if they’re promoting “responsible gambling.” So now McDavid does BetMGM ads about responsible gaming tools… for the same company he was pitching gambling to a year earlier. And Ontario’s the only province that even bothered with the ban.
Then there’s Drake. He reportedly signed a $100 million per year deal with Stake.com in 2022. But a Bloomberg Businessweek investigation alleges that he won big on Stake’s proprietary games four times more frequently than average players. On third-party games where Stake couldn’t control the odds? His win rate was perfectly average. He’s now facing multiple lawsuits, including a RICO suit.
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The Line That Disappeared
So let’s talk about where the line actually went.
From the finance side, look at zero-day options. 0DTE. You’re betting on whether the market goes up or down today, and the contract expires worthless by close of business if you’re wrong. In 2016, zero-day options were about 5% of S&P 500 options volume. By September 2025, they hit 60%. And retail investors account for an estimated 50 to 60% of that activity.
If you bought a zero-day option on Tesla this morning, explain to me how that’s different from betting on the Leafs tonight. I’ll wait.
Then you’ve got meme stocks, memecoins, leveraged ETFs that can vaporize your money in a day. Communities built around speculative gambling dressed up as investing. And yes, Canadians are doing this too. You can trade 0DTE options through Interactive Brokers or any US-linked brokerage account from your couch in Mississauga.
The Subreddit community r/WallStreetBets is the cultural proof point. A community of millions where posting screenshots of six-figure losses gets you applause. They literally call it “loss porn.” These are people posting their life savings disappearing in real-time, and the comments are full of laughing emojis and congratulations.
The Human Cost
I need to shift gears here for a second.
There’s a subreddit called r/problemgambling. If you spend ten minutes reading it, you’ll find stories from people who lost their marriages, their homes, their kids’ education funds. And most of them say the same thing: “I never thought I had a problem.”
Now contrast that with WallStreetBets. On one subreddit, people are celebrating losing everything. On another, people are begging for help because they lost everything. Same outcome. Completely different reaction.
And the numbers back up how serious this is. According to Mental Health Research Canada, 9.1% of gamblers now classify as problem gamblers. That’s nearly one in ten. And those problem gamblers were 4 times more likely to have thought about suicide and 7 times more likely to have planned one in the past 12 months.
Among young adults who gambled online, 23.5% reported high levels of gambling-related harms. And online gamblers were 45 times more likely to meet criteria for problem gambling compared to lottery-only players. That number isn’t a typo. Forty-five times.
So here’s where I stand on this.
I’m not anti-gambling. I said it at the top. I play poker with my friends. I believe in free will. Adults should be able to make their own choices with their own money. But free will only means something when the game isn’t rigged against you.
And right now? The game is rigged. You’ve got platforms designed to keep you trading. Governments collecting hundreds of millions while running ads telling you to gamble responsibly. Celebrities getting paid to make it look fun. And none of them are sitting across from the people whose lives fall apart because of it. I know people in my own life who’ve been affected by this. It’s not abstract to me.
Look, we figured this out with alcohol. We figured it out with tobacco. It took decades and it was ugly, but we eventually said okay, you can sell this, but here are the guardrails. That’s where gambling needs to go. Real guardrails. Not a “responsible gambling” logo at the bottom of a McDavid ad.
But, I’m not holding my breath. Because when this much money is involved, governments get greedy. Corporations get greedy. And the people who pay the price are the ones who can least afford it. Every single time.
The line between investing and gambling didn’t disappear on its own. It was erased by platforms, governments, and celebrities who profit when you can’t tell the difference. If that makes you want to rethink your financial plan, good. That’s the point.
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