TORONTO — Investor rights advocate FAIR Canada says the existing restrictions on prediction market contracts should remain unless broader access is shown to benefit investors and serve the public interest.
Prediction market trading lets customers make wagers on the outcome of real-world events, though in Canada it is limited to economic, financial or climate matters.
However, the U.S. allows contracts to be traded on a much wider range of events including sports, entertainment and geopolitical events.
FAIR Canada CEO Jean-Paul Bureaud says an event contract may be a derivative in legal form, but in substance it can still be a wager. He says if legal form alone justified access to our capital markets, the line between investing and gambling would disappear.
There has been a disagreement among regulators, financial services companies and academics over which legislation should theoretically govern sports and entertainment prediction trading.
The Canadian Securities Administrators said last month that prediction market contracts based on sports and entertainment events should not be regulated within securities and derivatives legislation.
Wealthsimple said in a white paper earlier this year that assigning gaming regulation to contracts, like those spanning sports, while leaving others under securities jurisdiction is “unworkable and does not reflect the structure of these contracts or markets.”
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This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 24, 2026.
