what is the legality of the skill testing question? Anyone know?
1. Is a skill-testing question required?
Skill-testing questions are a sort of Canadian thing.
The short answer is that skill-testing questions are usually, but not always, required to operate a contest in Canada. They are commonly required and administered to potential winners before being declared a winner as one way to avoid the illegal lottery offences of the Canadian federal Criminal Code. In general, the Code prohibits games of chance (or mixed chance and skill) where contestants pay money or other consideration (i.e., something of value) to win a prize. Including a skill-testing question is one way to remove a contest from many of the lottery offences that include pure chance as an element of the offence (i.e., a way to remove some chance via the skill of a reasonably difficult question, typically a two-digit, four-step math question).
As such, including a skill-testing question makes a promotion one of “mixed chance and skill”, so that if consideration is then also removed running a contest becomes low risk and a common strategy used by contest promoters to avoid the Code’s illegal lottery offences. To come back to the point that they are not always required, promoters sometimes operate “pure skill” contests (which are generally not addressed by the relevant lottery sections of the
Code) or award prizes that are not listed in the relevant
Codesections as one way to require a purchase as a condition of participation. The existing Canadian case law under the
Code’s lottery sections (section 206) is, however, generally old and often inconsistent so
determining whether a contest is one of “pure skill” and whether a purchase or other consideration can be required can be complex and uncertain. As such, cautious contest promoters generally remove two of the three elements of an illegal lottery to be safe (i.e., remove consideration through a “no purchase” entry option and include a “skill-testing question” to remove part of the chance element).
Source:
http://www.ipvancouverblog.com/2013/11/top-10-questions-about-canadian-contest-sweepstakes-laws-part-i/
Criminal code lottery offence is below for reference:
206. (1) Every one is guilty of an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding two years who (…)
- (f) disposes of any goods, wares or merchandise by any game of chance or any game of mixed chance and skill in which the contestant or competitor pays money or other valuable consideration; (…)
Of note, even one person that got the question wrong (twice) still got the prize:
Winner denied Tim Hortons prize
