Finance Minister Raymond Bachand announced Wednesday that the cabinet has approved the move in a bid “to cannibalize illegal gambling” sites that now offer an array of gambling opportunities to Quebecers.

“I believe this to be an efficient way of fighting the underground economy,” he said.

Loto-Québec will join sister lottery corporations in British Columbia and Atlantic Canada in offering a common platform for the online games of chance.

Special measures will be taken to ensure would-be gamblers are adults, Loto-Québec CEO Alain Cousineau told reporters. Quebec will be drawing on the experience of Sweden, where the online gaming market generated sales of $600 million in 2008, he said.

The day the publicly owned Swedish lottery corporation launched its online poker site, it took 25 per cent of the market share from non-regulated sites within four hours, Cousineau said.

The Quebec site will be open only to Quebec residents who are physically within the province but those players will be able to engage players in the other participating jurisdictions.

Bachand estimated that by 2012, revenues generated by the new online offerings could reach about $50 million in Quebec.

Online gaming has grown dramatically in Canada in recent years with Quebecers spending an estimated $80 million a year, reporters were told.

One of the largest hubs of online gambling is located on Montreal’s South Shore in the Kahnawake Mohawk reserve, where the Kahanwake Gaming Commission oversees more than 200 permit holders whose servers are located in the community. Although the gaming commission has been operating for years, it is widely described as illegal by government authorities.

When asked about Kahnawake on Wednesday, Bachand said “illegal gaming exists” and then went on to describe how the RCMP heads a multi-agency squad looking into illegal gambling in Canada.