While Canadian gambling laws originated in English statute law dating back several centuries, the only revisions made in the 1953 edition of the Criminal Code were definitional. However, several years later it became legal for provincial governments to operate lotteries and to authorize their operation under the auspices of religious or charitable organizations. As a result of the 1985 amendment, the Federal government has been divested of any capacity to conduct lotteries and provincial authority has been expanded. The amendment was based on contractual criminal law and reformed the law through an executive, rather than legislative, process. This resulted from the transformation of gambling law into a matter of Federal-provincial relations which are characterized by the dominance of the respective executive branches. Similarly, the Federal-provincial negotiations related to gaming and lotteries were conducted through the virtual exclusion of the legislatures. This process has raised questions regarding the constitutionality of the transfer of power between Federal and provincial governments in this area. However, court decisions have affirmed a policy of constitutional flexibility by defining the limits of concepts including Federal-provincial interdelegation and referential conditional legislation. 28 references