Stick Business: Canada's Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL):

There are three rules that you need to follow when sending commercial electronic messages (CEM). For many of you, this applies to the marketing email that you send to your customers and the sports market.

A commercial electronic message is any electronic message that encourages participation in a commercial activity (includes advertisements and information about promotions, offers, business opportunities, etc.), regardless of whether there is an expectation of profit.

The 3 Rules:

Consent (Expressed or implied consent to send messages)
Identification (Clearly and simply identify your company)
Unsubscribe Mechanism (In every message, you must provide a way for recipients to unsubscribe from receiving emails in the future.)

The legislation comes into force July 1, 2014.

If you use a professional e-news service, like Constant Contact which we use, there are mechanisms already built into the platform that help you comply with the three rules. If you continue to use your day-to-day business email service to send out marketing messages, you run the risk of being non-compliant and face penalties.

Non-compliance:
The CRTC has the ability to impose administrative monetary penalties for violations of CASL of up to $10 million per violation.

CASL also includes a private right of action, which allows any person affected by a violation of CASL and related amendments to PIPEDA and the Competition Act to sue for actual and/or statutory damages. The private right of action comes into force on July 1, 2017.

For more information, visit the CRTC page on CASL: http://www.crtc.gc.ca/eng/casl-lcap.htm

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