The Canadian Gaming Summit ended last Thursday but not before delivering some news, a new name (to be henceforth known as SBC Summit Canada), some new partnerships and some new friends before some 3,000-plus weary members of the gambling industry boarding planes, trains, buses, Ubers and other automobiles to head home.

Before he could take his leave from the Metro Toronto Convention Centre, Canadian Gaming Association boss Paul Burns kindly lent your humble host a seat inside the CGA Members Lounge and agreed to give us his thoughts and layers for a new episode of the Gaming News Canada Show at the end of three days of meetings, panels, speeches from political types representing the provincial governments of both Alberta and Ontario, and other happenings during the summit.

Included were, as Dave Briggs wrote in last Friday’s newsletter, comments from the Attorney General of Ontario, Doug Downey, that the province will be “aggressively” going after operators who have given the one-finger salute to getting their licence, and news from the province’s Minister of Tourism, Culture and Gaming, Stan Cho, that his office will be reviewing the legal gambling industry – now three-plus years old.

Burns also weighed in on the comments from Alberta minister Dale Nally during the summit on the road to regulation in the western Canada province.

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The latest episode of the Gaming News Canada Show is one of the two-part type as we pack our suitcase and fill up the GNC vehicle before heading to the city below Uxbridge for this week’s Canadian Gaming Summit.

Canadian Gaming Association senior executive Amanda Brewer returned to the show for a rapid round on what’s happening across the national gaming industry these days. That includes the slow road to an open market in Alberta, the wait at iGaming Ontario for a new boss and the launch of a centralized self-exclusion program, and lobbying efforts for open gambling regimes in British Columbia.

We also had a chat about this week’s summit, where Brewer will moderate “The urgent need to modernize Canada’s AML framework” panel Wednesday a.m. with Derek Ramm (Kinectify), Brian Terranova (FanDuel) and Heinen Hutchison Robitaille LLP partner Scott Hutchison.

Craig Cornforth of EPIC Global Solutions took time out from the SBC Summit Malta last week to make his maiden GNCS appearance. The former auto dealer told his poignant story around gambling addiction and the road to recovery that led him to join EPIC and its work in the prevention of gambling harm. Cornforth will be on stage with Alistair Facciol (Rhino Entertainment), Ryan McCarthy (BCLC), Covers journalist Geoff Zochodne and yours truly for a Thursday morning chin wag on “Regulation and responsibility: how the new politics affect player protection”.

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The Canadian Gaming Association has been active for quite some time now in advocating for updates to anti-money laundering laws in our home and native land with the expansion of legal gambling. Dave Briggs addressed the topic at the beginning of the year with CGA boss Paul Burns, who said the uncertain political climate at that time most likely meant no movement until this fall.

The CGA established a committee to continue moving ahead with its efforts to update the AML rules and regulations. The chair of that committee, Derek Ramm, was our guest on a new episode of the Gaming News Canada Show. Ramm, the Global Head of Advisory Services for Kinectify, knows AML like Corey Perry knows how to torment opponents, with a resume that includes stops with Canada’s financial intelligence unit (FINTRAC), the Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario, the Ontario Lottery & Gaming Corporation (OLG), and the Bermuda Casino Gaming Commission. He will appear on “The urgent need to modernize Ontario’s AML framework” panel with moderator Amanda Brewer, FanDuel’s Brian Terranova and Scott Hutchison of Heinen Hutchison Robitaille LLC at next week’s Canadian Gaming Summit in the city below Aurora.

Along with discussing Kinectify’s role in identifying suspicious activity and working with stakeholders in Canada and the U.S., Ramm also answered our questions about the problems for operators in Ontario’s open market when it comes to AML. That included a hacking escapade in 2024 that made it impossible for operators to file suspicious transaction reports to FINTRAC, and hiccups by iGaming Ontario on data collection and technology since the opening of the market in April 2022.

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