By Steve Kupferman

The Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation announced today that they’ll be implementing (and operating) an online gambling service, to launch sometime in 2012. This comes after similar announcements by provincial gaming corporations in British Columbia and Quebec. In fact, B.C.’s online casino has already been up and running for a month. US states are looking at getting in on the action, too. The reason for all this excitement is that online gaming makes fiscal sense for cash-poor governments: the Star’s sources estimate that Ontario’s hypothetical online poker tables will rake in $500 million per year. In profit.