Indigenous Rights Go Digital in Canada

An existing licensing authority is expanding its jurisdiction to iGaming in Canada, bringing the most prominent indigenous tribes into the iGaming market. 

From Land-based to Online

The KPK Commission is the authority in place in Canada to license, regulate and oversee eCommerce within the 11 nation File Hills Qu’Appelle Tribal Council, who until now have implemented their most well-known expansion in the area of land-based casinos and gaming.

File Hills Qu’Appelle already supports and invests in natural resource, construction, housing health care, and land-based casino activity, and the new jurisdiction green lights them to enter iGaming. 

Implementation

The mobilization process by which an infrastructure for regulation was implemented is interesting: it started with KPK's interest in the popularity and effectiveness of revenue increases in the Asian markets as a result of iGaming, according to what KPK Commission President Edmund Bellegarde told Calvin Ayre.

After tabbing iGaming an opportunity for growth, Bellegarde explains that the First Nation members of File Hills were mobilized to enact laws and regulations in their own charters for which KPK created the KPK Group of Companies and the KPK Commission to oversee that activity. KPK itself is a non-profit quasi self-regulatory organization that has been created to unify the activities of all the most prominent Indian tribes in Canada under one set of guidelines. Those activities have now been expanded to include online gambling. 

Indigenous Rights 

The commission extends the indigenous rights authority of the First Nation members, that has commonly come to be associated with the associated trend by which Indian reservations all over North America were allowed to create a commission on their lands as outside the jurisdiction of the states that otherwise prohibited gambling activity.

Banking Services

The tribal council itself also maintains a relationship with the governments of Antigua and Barbuda, and this will will open the door for a foray into financial services. Bellegarde further disclosed that KPK is in the final stages of setting up the KPK Bank under a Class 1 offshore bank license in Antigua as a commercial-digital bank specializing in banking and merchant account services for iGaming operators.