The Canada-wide problem gambling helpline is 1-866-531-2600 and is free, confidential and staffed twenty-four hours a day. In Ontario, ConnexOntario is reachable on 1-866-531-2600 and by live chat. In British Columbia, the Problem Gambling Help Line is 1-888-795-6111. In Alberta, call 1-866-332-2322. In Quebec, call 1-800-461-0140.
You do not need to have a diagnosis, a debt figure or a plan before calling. Wanting to talk it through is a sufficient reason.
Depositing more than intended, repeatedly. Playing to win back a loss rather than for entertainment. Depositing money set aside for something else. Hiding how much has been spent from someone close to you. Feeling you have to keep playing to fix the position. Borrowing to fund a deposit.
None of these requires a crisis to be worth acting on. The tools below are easier to use early than late.
Deposit limits set at the account level, before a session rather than during one. Every operator ranked on this site offers them and none advertises them prominently, so you will usually have to look in account settings to find them.
Time-outs, which lock an account for a set period. Self-exclusion, which closes it for months or years and is deliberately difficult to reverse. Third-party blocking software installed at the device or network level, which is worth considering because it applies to sites you have not signed up with yet.
In Ontario, provincially licensed operators participate in a centralised self-exclusion scheme covering every site in that market at once. Offshore operators, including all of those ranked on this site, sit outside it, and an exclusion registered with one of them does not travel to the others. That gap is the strongest single argument for device-level blocking.
The helplines above take calls from people worried about someone else, not only from players. Gam-Anon groups exist across Canada for family members. If money has gone missing or debts have appeared, a non-profit credit counselling service is usually a better first call than a lender.
Nothing on these pages presents gambling as income, a strategy or a way out of a financial problem, because it is none of those. Where an operator's terms make an offer unclearable, the ranking says so even when that operator pays us. Where an offer encourages a larger deposit than a reader should make, that is stated as plainly as we can manage.