In April 2015 the government of Quebec introduced a new law that is going to block different gambling websites. A few days ago, Quebec authorities announced that they are moving forward with the plan to block unlicensed online gambling sites, in particular, sites that aren’t approved and authorized by Loto-Québec, a huge corporation that operates the lotteries and casinos in Quebec.

The plan is part of the provincial budget announced in April this year. Last week the Finance Minister of Quebec Carlos Leitao said that they are moving forward with the implementation of this budget. One of the amendments to the local Consumer Protection Act is the plan to block unauthorized gambling websites. Operators that fail to comply are going to be fined with $100,000 or even $200,000.

With this plan the government hopes to bring in extra $13.5 million in online gambling revenues in 2016 and 2017 to Espacejeux, a government website.

According to critics, this new law is futile and it is a bad precedent to censoring the Internet. The chairman of the Internet Society Canadian chapter, Timothy Denton, told media that the plan to block gambling sites won’t work in Quebec because there is no appropriate authority to regulate the web in such manner. With the virtual private network and change of domain names Canadian people can still access content that is blocked in the country.