Anti-Spam (CASL)

In July 2014, Canada’s federal anti-spam legislation (CASL), which is one of the strictest spam laws in the world, came into force.   CASL creates an “opt-in” regime for sending commercial electronic messages (or “CEMs”) to Canadians and amends four federal statutes: the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission Act, the Competition Act, the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act and Telecommunications Act.

In general, CASL requires express or implied consent to send CEMs and imposes certain form (i.e., sender identification) and unsubscribe requirements.  The legislation includes a number of categories of implied consent and exemptions, which should be carefully reviewed before being relied upon.

CASL can apply to, among other things, outbound electronic marketing, marketing to existing customers, compiling marketing lists from online e-mail addresses, collecting e-mails for marketing during contests and other promotions, certain types of B2B marketing (e.g., marketing to business clients found online or on social media platforms and contacts from networking events) and “friends and family” and other similar promotions where participants are asked to share information with their contacts by either e-mail or other types of messages to electronic addresses (e.g., over social media platforms).

CASL (Canadian Anti-Spam Law)
Legal Services

Our anti-spam law (CASL) legal services include advice relating to general CASL compliance, consent requirements; identification and unsubscribe requirements, Competition Act compliance for electronic marketing and advertising, steps to adapt existing electronic marketing and consent requests to comply with CASL, CASL compliance programs and policies, record-keeping requirements (i.e., to document express and implied consent), drafting list agreements for sharing marketing lists, drafting provisions for commercial agreements (e.g., to document the “existing business relationship” exemption) and CASL compliance for specific types of advertising and marketing (e.g., collecting and using e-mail addresses in contests, “friends and family” type promotions and other electronic marketing).

For more information see: Anti-Spam (CASL), Anti-Spam (CASL) FAQs, Anti-Spam (CASL) Precedents/Forms and Contests & CASL.

Representative Work

Some representative examples of our Canadian anti-spam law (CASL) work includes CASL related opinions and advice, CASL compliance programs, checklists for complying with the consent, sender identification and unsubscribe requirements of CASL, advice to structure distribution lists and document consent, reviewing draft consent requests and sender identification information, guidance structuring unsubscribe options (e.g., blanket unsubscribes, unsubscribe menus, etc.), list sharing agreements and advice relating to categories of implied consent and CASL exemptions (including existing business relationship implied consent and the business-to-business exemption).

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CANADIAN CASL (ANTI-SPAM LAW) PRECEDENTS

Do you need a precedent or checklist
to comply with CASL (Canadian anti-spam law)?

We offer Canadian anti-spam law (CASL) precedents and checklists to help electronic marketers comply with CASL.

These include checklists and precedents for express consent requests (including on behalf of third parties), sender identification information, unsubscribe mechanisms, business related exemptions and types of implied consent and documenting consent and scrubbing distribution lists.  We also offer a CASL corporate compliance program.

The following are the CASL (Canadian anti-spam law) precedents and checklists that we offer:

  • Checklists & Precedents: Express Consent Requests & Consent For Third Parties
  • Checklists & Precedents: Sender Identification Information & Unsubscribe Mechanism
  • Checklists & Precedents: Common Business Related Exemptions & Implied Consent
  • Checklist & Precedents: Documenting Consent & Scrubbing Mailing Lists
  • CASL Corporate Compliance Program

For more information and to order, see: Canadian CASL (Anti-Spam Law) Forms.