Licensing and Regulation

This page explains how licensing and regulation work for online gambling in Canada, and what that means for how this site is written and published.

This site is a publisher, not an operator

homemadefood.app is an information publisher. It holds no gambling licence in any province or territory, and it does not accept bets, hold player funds, or operate games. Nothing on this site is a gambling product. The site publishes explanatory articles about how online gambling works, how games are structured, and how players tend to behave around them.

What a licence means in general terms

A gambling licence is permission from a regulator to offer gambling to the public within a defined jurisdiction. In Ontario, the Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario (AGCO) is the regulator, and iGaming Ontario conducts and manages the regulated market for online gambling operators that hold an AGCO licence. A licence generally means the operator has met the regulator’s requirements on areas such as game integrity, player account handling, complaints, and responsible gambling tools. It also means the regulator can inspect, audit, and take enforcement action, including suspending or revoking the licence.

A licence is specific to a jurisdiction. It does not travel. An operator licensed in one province is not thereby licensed in another, and an operator licensed elsewhere in the world is not licensed in Canada unless a Canadian regulator has granted it a licence.

Provincial rules differ

Gambling regulation in Canada is provincial and territorial, so the rules a reader encounters depend on where that reader is located. The minimum age to gamble is 19 in most provinces and 18 in Alberta, Manitoba, and Quebec. Regulated markets, permitted operator types, and available player protections also vary by province. Readers should treat their own province’s rules as the ones that apply to them.

Check the licence on the regulator’s register

Before playing with any operator, a reader can check whether that operator holds a licence by looking it up on the regulator’s own public register. The AGCO publishes licensing information at agco.ca, and market information for Ontario is published at igamingontario.ca. The register is the source of record. This site does not claim that any operator is licensed unless the page for that operator says so and cites the register.

What the writer reads

Sophie Brown is a behavioural-research assistant in a university psychology lab, where she codes survey data on gambling habits. She writes about player psychology and tournament play, including variable-ratio reinforcement, near-miss effects, and loss-chasing as design features rather than personal failings. She cites a claim only when it has a named source. Her author page is at /author/spinsqueen/.

How this affects what is published here

Because the site is not an operator, it does not present itself as a place to gamble. Articles describe mechanics and research findings, and they link out where a reader needs a regulator or a support service. Some outbound links to operators may earn a commission, which is explained at /affiliate-disclosure/. Editorial decisions are described at /editorial-policy/, and support information is at /responsible-gambling/. General questions about the site can be raised through the comment form on posts, or through /contact-eeat/. Background on the site is at /about-us/, and data handling is described at /privacy-policy/.