Self exclusion in Canada: BetGuard, and the provinces

No app can make gambling impossible on an iPhone. The phone belongs to the person holding it, the Screen Time permission a blocker runs on is theirs to withdraw, and a product that says otherwise is claiming a power iOS does not give it. What a circle changes is the cost of undoing it, because ending a term early takes a request, a wait measured in days rather than seconds, and a second person who is told when protection goes off, when the phone stops confirming, and when the subscription lapses.

First, what Fold'em is not

Fold'em is not BetGuard, is not any provincial programme, has no connection to iGaming Ontario or to the Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario, and registers nobody with any of them. Those are public services, they are free, and they are worth doing before an app is worth downloading. This page also has a language limit worth stating at the top: it is in English, Quebec's scheme and its regulator operate in French, and an English page does not serve a Quebec reader well.

Ontario's central register, in its own words

BetGuard

iGaming Ontario announced it on 14 May 2026 as a tool that enables individuals aged 19 and older to voluntarily opt out of all Ontario regulated online gaming platforms through one online portal. Opting out means players are prevented from accessing their existing accounts, creating new accounts, or receive marketing communications from any regulated igaming site in Ontario.

What it reaches. The whole regulated online market of one province, the provincial operator included: the launch announcement says it Incorporates all igaming websites in Ontario's regulated market, including OLG's.

How long. The announcement lists the choices as a term of 6 months, 1 year, 5 years or a custom term.

What it does not reach. The premises. Ontario's regulator keeps the two apart on its own page: to take a break or self-exclude from gambling at casinos, charitable gaming centres and OLG.ca it sends the reader to a different programme, My PlayBreak, and names BetGuard only for regulated internet gaming sites. Two programmes, two registrations, and neither reaches a site outside the regulated market or a device.

What a self exclusion covers here, per the regulator. The commission describes the effect as stopping your access to casinos, online gaming sites, and removing you from mailing lists and personalized advertisements for six months, one year, or five years.

How many sites. The only figure on a first party page is in a ministerial quotation on the launch announcement itself, which describes people playing across more than 75 regulated sites. Trade press has reported a brand count; none is quoted here, because the register's own site could not be read.

Sources: igamingontario.ca, BetGuard launch, 14 May 2026, read 3 September 2026; agco.ca/en/lottery-and-gaming/safer-gambling, read 3 September 2026.

Outside Ontario it is one province at a time

There is no shared list. Each province's lottery and gaming corporation or regulator runs its own programme, they do not talk to each other, and registering in one province does nothing in the next. Only one other province's own pages could be read from this machine on 3 September 2026, and it is the one that publishes its terms most clearly.

Quebec. Loto-Québec publishes three separate tools with three separate lengths, under the responsible gambling brand it calls Wise Play in English. Taking a break runs 1 to 89 days and limits access to its own online games. Self-exclusion from online gambling runs 3 months to 5 years. Self-exclusion from casinos and gaming halls runs 3 months to 5 years as well and is a separate registration again. Quebec is the one province in this set where the online and the land based versions are both offered by the same operator, and they are still two decisions.

Source: bienjouer.lotoquebec.com/en/self-exclusion, read 3 September 2026.

British Columbia. The province's own gambling support service publishes its helpline and describes itself as Gambling Support BC (GSBC), offering free help for any British Columbia resident having difficulties because of gambling, this includes your own gambling or a loved one's gambling. Its self exclusion programme is run by the provincial lottery corporation and its terms are not stated on the page read here, so this page does not state them either.

Source: gamblingsupportbc.ca, read 3 September 2026.

Everywhere else. Alberta, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, the Atlantic provinces and the territories each run their own arrangements through their lottery corporations. None was read for this page and none is described on it. Start at your own province's lottery corporation or at the helpline in the block below.

Who to call in Canada

ConnexOntario in Ontario, all hours, and named by the regulator itself, 1 866 531 2600. The commission's own page says If you or someone you know is struggling with gambling, call ConnexOntario at 1-866-531-2600, text them at 247247 and describes the service as free, confidential, and accessible around the clock.

Gambling Support BC in British Columbia, all hours, 1 888 795 6111. Its own page describes a 24/7 helpline where Callers to the helpline will be instantly connected to a navigator who can provide immediate assistance, help you find services in your community, or connect you to a free counsellor.

Sources: agco.ca/en/lottery-and-gaming/safer-gambling, read 3 September 2026; gamblingsupportbc.ca, read 3 September 2026.

The apps themselves

If one particular app is the one you keep opening, its page says which layer reaches it and what the operator's own account tools do. Our own roster files one brand under Canada with a page of its own today, measured on 1 September 2026; several brands a Canadian reader will recognise are filed under other markets, and the whole roster is at the operator pages.

• PROLINE+

The layer a register never touches

The device layer answers the two things a register structurally cannot, and in a country where the register stops at a provincial border that matters more than it does elsewhere. On an iPhone it is Apple's Screen Time sealing the apps you picked, so a sealed app draws a block screen instead of opening, and an encrypted DNS setting that answers a known gambling address with 0.0.0.0, the address for nowhere, so the page fails to load in any browser on the phone.

What it does not do is worth the same plainness. A phone block reaches one handset. It does not close an account, does not stop one being opened, does not reach a laptop or a casino floor, and it cannot register you with any province. Both halves also belong to the person holding the phone: Screen Time permission can be withdrawn in iOS Settings and the DNS setting can be switched off there, and no app on iOS can prevent either. What a product can do about that is report it rather than pretend, which is what a keyholder is for.

Register with your province first, because it is free and it reaches every operator inside it. Ask your bank about a gambling block. Then close the device layer. The order that holds puts all of it in sequence, and what a register does not reach is the fuller account of why the phone did not notice.

What this page could not read

• BetGuard's own site. betguard.ca renders through JavaScript this machine cannot execute and returned a page with no body text on 3 September 2026, so everything about the register on this page is quoted from iGaming Ontario, which runs it, and from the commission that regulates it. The register's own list of covered brands, its identity requirements and its behaviour at the end of a term are unread rather than absent.
• ConnexOntario's own site. connexontario.ca answered an automated read with a challenge page rather than content on 3 September 2026, so its number here is cited to the regulator's page, which prints it.
• The other provinces. Alberta's and British Columbia's self exclusion programmes were not read from an official page on 3 September 2026, so their names, coverage and lengths are not stated here.