OTTAWA – The CRTC has revised the country’s new anti-spam law, but Canadian businesses hoping for a significant re-tooling may be disappointed.
According to a Canadian Communications Law report by business law firm Stikeman Elliott, the final regulations include the following changes from those originally proposed:
– Clarification that persons sending a message, or persons on whose behalf a message is sent, must identify themselves by the name by which they carry on business;
– Greater choice with respect to the contact information to be provided. Senders, and those seeking consent to send messages, may now provide either a telephone number providing access to an agent or a voice messaging system, an email address or a web address. The original proposal seemed to require the provision of all of these, as well as a physical address;
– Revised requirements that web-based information be “readily accessible” and that the required unsubscribe mechanism must “be able to be readily performed.” The original proposed Regulations specified these requirements with reference to a maximum number of “clicks”;
– The revised regulations now indicate that consent for the receipt of a commercial electronic message may be obtained orally, as well as in writing, as the original proposed regulations provided; however, the regulations do not provide certainty as to whether electronic forms of consent will be considered to be “in writing,” which was the chief concern of many stakeholders with this requirement;
– The regulations still require that when seeking consent, requestors must include a statement indicating that consent can be withdrawn, but no longer requires the requestor to specify through which avenues such a withdrawal of consent could be made.
