🇨🇦 Ontarians spent $100B betting online, triggering suicides and bankruptcies. Now it’s Alberta’s turn

Ontario turned gambling into a government-approved cash vacuum, and now Alberta is lining up to copy the scam. $103 billion wagered, $4.3 billion in revenue, and 20 per cent of the take flowing straight to the province, as reported. Then the same political class acts stunned when bankruptcies triple, help-line calls nearly double, and suicides linked to gambling rise after legalization. Funny how the state always discovers its moral concern after collecting the rake.

This is the modern Canadian model in miniature: deregulate vice, flood the culture with ads, call it responsible gaming, then use the social wreckage to justify more bureaucracy. A future doctor sleeping in his car after losing $400,000 on a phone is not some quirky side story. It is what happens when governments bless predatory tech addiction because it pays. And Alberta’s answer is not to stop the machine, but to get its own cut. Not governance. Not nation-building. Just a late-stage revenue farm feeding on a hollowed-out public.

🍁 Maple Chronicles