Don’t you hate receiving unsolicited emails from businesses you’ve either never heard of, or don’t remember subscribing to for their newsletters? Turns out the federal government’s got your back…sort of. 

Canada is one of the last developed nations in the world to enact anti-spam legislation but, effective July 1, 2014, that’s no longer going to be the case. And in creating anti-spam rules and regulations to govern the transmission of commercial electronic messages, Canada has made up for lost time by assembling some of the strictest and unwieldy laws yet in this area.

Generally referred to as Canada’s Anti-Spam Legislation (“CASL”), the new act is intended to promote efficiency in the Canadian economy by discouraging reliance by businesses on electronic communication to carry out their commercial activities.

Unless you fall into one of the numerous exemptions, CASL broadly prohibits the sending of any electronic message that encourages participation in a commercial activity, regardless of whether there is an expectation for profit. The definition of “electronic message” casts a wide enough net to capture any means of telecommunication, including a text, sound, voice or image message. That means emails, text messages, phone calls, instant messaging and social media communications are all covered.

First, each commercial electronic message must include, clearly and prominently, the following information: name and contact information of sender, whether the message is being sent on behalf of another person and an unsubscribe mechanism which enables the recipient to unsubscribe without incurring any cost and by using the same means by which the message was sent.

Certain relationships are automatically exempted from the requirement to obtain consent, including: