Canada's Anti-Spam Law (CASL) enters into force on Canada Day, July 1. It was passed in 2010 as a "made-in-Canada" solution to "drive spammers out of Canada".
Are you outside Canada? It's important to know that this law reaches beyond Canada's borders. CASL is already affecting businesses in the United States, Europe and elsewhere as they change their communications practices to send emails and other "commercial electronic messages" into Canada.
As we described in our presentation Comparing CASL to CAN-SPAM, the new law applies to messages that are accessed by a computer system in Canada. That means that messages sent by a person, business or organization outside of Canada, to a person in Canada, are subject to the law.
CASL expressly provides for sharing information among the Government of Canada, the Canadian CASL enforcement agencies, and "the government of a foreign state" or international organization, for the purposes of administering CASL's anti-spam (and other) provisions. The MOU among the Canadian CASL enforcement agencies (see also our earlier post) similarly references processes to share and disseminate information received from and provided to their foreign counterpart agencies.
In a speech yesterday, the Chair of the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, Jean-Pierre Blais, emphasized the CRTC's cooperation with its international counterparts to combat unlawful telemarketers, hackers and spammers that "often operate outside our borders". The Chairman specifically named "the Federal Trade Commission in the U.S., the Office of Communication (OFCOM) in the U.K., the Authority for Consumers and Markets in the Netherlands, the Australian Communications and Media Authority and others", and noted that the CRTC has led or participated in many international networks on unlawful telecommunications.
Companies should also take note that a violation of CASL might also result in the CRTC exercising its so-called "name and shame" power, by posting the name of the offender and the violation on its online compliance and enforcement list. The CRTC has for years published notices of violation with respect to its "Do Not Call List", and is expected to take a similar approach for CASL notices of violation as well.
Companies that are working on their CASL compliance programs should take note of the CRTC's recently published Anti-Spam Compliance and Enforcement Guidelines. A very helpful summary by Tim Banks, with a link to the Guidelines, is available here.
For more information, visit our Privacy and Data Security blog at www.datagovernancelaw.com
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