Now is a pretty good time to be a sports fan.
We just finished the NBA Finals,
the Stanley Cup Finals are in progress, Major League Baseball is well underway
and before you know it, NFL football will be starting up again.
Ontario just recently opened up online sports betting and we're being
inundated with commercials for all the casino and sports betting online apps.
My name is Ira Smith, President of
Ira Smith Trustee & Receiver Inc.
Both Brandon Smith and myself are available to answer any
questions you may have either about this Brandon's Blog or anything else at all.
So shoot us a message, give us
a phone call, we would love to speak with you.
I hope you can watch until the end of this
video because I know you will find it informative.
The title of today's Brandon's blog is Online Sports Betting: Discussion
In Ontario Is About Whether It Could Lead To Alarming Addiction.
Brandon thought that with all the
TV advertisements for all the new sports betting online apps,
it would be a good time to look at the issue of addiction and bankruptcy.
So Brandon goes through the history, the brief history, of answering
the question, is online gambling legal in Ontario?
A year ago, the federal government approved online gambling single
game gambling and Ontario was the first province to have online gambling.
It is run by iGaming Ontario,
which is a division of the Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario,
which supervises facilities running casinos, gambling, alcohol service.
Brandon goes over what is the Ontario gambling age, which is 19.
He talks about issues with Woodbine
racetrack in Toronto that they're not yet online,
and then looks at whether the online sports betting leads to gambling addiction.
And he goes over the issues of gambling addiction and looks to a recent
study out of the UK as to
what happened with online gambling
when the pandemic hit and everyone was forced to stay indoors.
And as you can imagine, online gambling not only went up,
but it went up the most for women, not men, for women.
So Brandon then looks at can you file bankruptcy for your online gambling debts?
And then goes through the issue of someone going bankrupt,
having stated, identified, an addiction as being the cause of their debt.
And when anyone identifies addiction as
the cause of their insolvency and therefore their bankruptcy,
it has to be handled slightly differently than a normal bankruptcy.
There won't be an automatic discharge, there will be a hearing in court.
And not only does the bankrupt person have to show that they've been rehabilitated
financially, they also have to show that
they have been rehabilitated at the time from their gambling addiction.
So how do they do that?
They have to either show that they've
constantly gone for therapy or joined a group such as Gamblers Anonymous
and they have to be able to
show that they have not used money.
For gambling
during the time that they're an undischarged bankrupt, and the Trustee needs to file
a report to indicate that through the counselling sessions and through their
observations of the bankrupt, the Trustee believe that
to be the case.
Because the bankruptcy system in Canada is
established to provide an overall rehabilitation of the person,
and in the case of any addiction, it also includes getting help for that addiction.
So I invite you to read the entire
Brandon's Blog below, because I know you will find it informative.
Again, both Brandon Smith and myself are available at any time to answer any
questions you may have either about this Brandon's Blog or anything else at all.
So I invite you to shoot us a message or give us a phone call.
We would love to speak with you.