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5 new CASL takeaways straight from the Chairman of the CRTC

On March 22nd the Chairman of the CRTC, Mr. Jean-Pierre Blais, spoke to members of the Canadian Marketing Association in Toronto. Mr. Blais’ speech focused on Canada’s Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL) and served to give marketers an idea of what to expect in the near future covering a variety of topics from cybersecurity, the imminent second phase of the CASL law, to the legislation’s scope.

We’ve gone ahead and distilled the talk into some key takeaways:
CASL is here to stay
In his speech to the CMA, Mr. Blais made reference to the idea that many marketers consider him their enemy, likely speaking to some of the negative feedback the CRTC has received from Canadian marketers about the legislation. The message was clear: CASL “is here to stay”. In fact, Mr. Blais believes these laws will only get tougher with time as electronic fraud becomes more prevalent.
Not slaying dragons
While CASL isn’t going anywhere, he was quick to allay some of the fears that the CRTC was going to use […]

CASL: A Year In Review

Since the Canadian Anti Spam Law came into effect on July 1, 2014 we have seen three major penalties enforced by the CRTC. These enforcements were not a joke. All three were significant fines against the companies for violating CASL. As we all now know, the CRTC is serious in their efforts to try and reduce spammy electronic communications as well as proper permission management processes.

There were a number of reasons why these companies were fined. Essentially, there are three rules that you must abide by in order to stay on the right side of the law and these companies did not abide by one or all three of these basic rules:

1. Consent has to be obtained and proven; implied or expressed.
2. The sender’s contact information must be provided.
3. An unsubscribe mechanism must be in place and unsubscribes must be processed within 10 days.

To dive into number 1 a little further, […]