- Polymarket’s restricted-region list now names Alberta, British Columbia, Ontario and Quebec.
- Those four provinces held 35.8 million of Canada’s 41.4 million residents on April 1.
- Traders there may close existing positions but cannot open new ones, the platform’s developer documentation says.
- Ontario’s exclusion rests on a settlement with the Ontario Securities Commission and runs to at least April 2027.
Polymarket’s close-only rule leaves six provinces and three territories, about 5.6 million people, as the only Canadian market still open to new trades.
EDMONTON – Polymarket has stopped accepting new trades from Alberta, British Columbia and Quebec, closing the prediction market to roughly 86% of Canada’s population. The restriction applied only to Ontario until this month, and the three provinces were added days before Alberta’s regulated online gambling market opened on July 13.
Close-Only Status Replaces Open Trading
Polymarket’s developer documentation lists the four provinces by region code, CA-AB, CA-BC, CA-ON and CA-QC, grouped under a regulatory restriction the company labels close-only on both its website and its API. The distinction matters for anyone already holding a position. A trader inside those provincial borders can sell a contract bought earlier. The platform refuses any request to open a new one.
That is a lighter setting than the one Polymarket applies to the seven jurisdictions under U.S. sanctions, where it blocks access outright. Using a virtual private network or a similar tool to bypass a geographic restriction breaches section 2.1.4 of Polymarket’s terms of use.
The Blocked Provinces Hold 86% Of Canadians
Ontario had 16,103,890 residents on April 1, Quebec 9,016,222, British Columbia 5,646,420 and Alberta 5,057,077, according to Statistics Canada’s quarterly population estimates published June 17. The four together account for 35.8 million of a national population estimated at 41,417,056.
That leaves six provinces and three territories with roughly 5.6 million people between them, a market smaller than British Columbia alone.
Alberta’s July 13 Opening Preceded The Change
Alberta’s private online gambling market opened on July 13 with 22 operator sites live, after a run-up in which the province pressed unregistered sites out of Alberta’s online gambling market. Alberta Gaming, Liquor and Cannabis regulates the market and requires registration before a private operator can serve players in the province, while the Alberta iGaming Corporation handles the commercial agreements.
Securities regulators, not gaming ones, have driven Polymarket’s difficulties in Canada, and its event contracts have never sat alongside the licensed online gambling sites for Canadians in any provincial framework.
Event Contracts Stay Legal Through Two Registered Dealers
The securities route into the same product remains open. The Canadian Investment Regulatory Organization has authorized two of its dealer members, Interactive Brokers Canada and Wealthsimple, to carry event contracts for Canadian clients, confined to economic indicators, financial markets and climate, barred from politics and sports, and limited to contracts with at least 30 days to maturity. That is the framework under which prediction markets arrived in Canada.
Interactive Brokers Canada sells forecast contracts listed by ForecastEx, a CFTC-designated contract market, and was the first CIRO dealer cleared to do so. Wealthsimple announced its Predict app on June 17, built on nearly 4,000 Kalshi contracts, and said the app was in beta testing and set to launch this summer. Both dealers sit between the exchange and the trader. Polymarket deals with traders directly, and it is the one withdrawing.
Ontario Has An End Date, The Other Three Do Not
Ontario’s block is the oldest of the four and the only one with a published expiry. A settlement with the Ontario Securities Commission, approved by Ontario’s Capital Markets Tribunal on April 17, 2025, imposed a $200,000 administrative penalty and $25,000 in costs on the platform’s operators, Blockratize Inc. and Adventure One QSS Inc., along with two-year prohibitions that run to April 2027 and an undertaking to keep Ontario residents off Polymarket.
Nothing in Polymarket’s published restrictions attaches a review date, a condition or an end point to the Alberta, British Columbia and Quebec entries.
