The Canadian Do Not Call List (DNCL) Rules

At the end of September 2008 Canadians became able to register their phone numbers with the national do not call list. If your business places a sales related call to a number on that do not call list, or sends a sales related fax, there could be an investigation and serious fines.

Everything you need to know can be found on the official government web site. There is a short and simple summary of the regulations. They also have a full list of the regulations. The do not call rules come into force a month from when a number is added to the list.

This is not legal advice, and you should consult your lawyer about any questions you may have, but put simply:

• If someone is on the do not call list you must not call them to solicit business no matter how cleverly you go about it.
• However, if you have an existing business relationship with them then you may call. It would be wise to have evidence of the relationship on file. An existing business relationship means:
  • a contract in the last 18 months, or
  • a sales enquiry initiated by them in the last 6 months
• You can also call if they have given you specific permission to call, but you should have some evidence of that permission. It may not be smart to rely on a negative option (eg. a client not asking you to stop calling). The regulations recognise a letter, fax, email or third party verified voice recording as evidence.
• Newspapers, survey companies and charities are among the exceptions but if you are not a survey company then pretending to do a survey to get permission to solicit business is probably going to land you in trouble.
• Anyone you call in the legitimate course of your business, can ask to be put on your company do not call list (DNCL),
  • even if you have a prior business relationship with them,
  • even if they are not on the national do not call list,
  • even if your call is not sales related,
  • even if you are a normally exempt organisation,
  and you must comply which means not calling them again for the next three years and one month. No exceptions and no excuses, period. The same investigative rules, fines and other penalties apply to your company Do Not Call List as apply to the National Do Not Call List.

There are special rules about permission to call and business relationships that could vary by industry. They are buried in the telemarketing rules, so you would do well to ask your lawyer for advice. In addition there are some basic rules about how any sales call must be made:

• You must not block call display when calling.
• You can only call during certain hours.
• Right at the start you must announce who you are, who you are calling for, and why you are calling.
• You must not use a machine to send out automated sales messages.

Accessing the National Do Not Call List (NDNCL)

Even if you don't normally cold call, you ought to register with the National Do Not Call List. In fact, the regulations require you to register, even if you are only doing permission based marketing and even if you are exempt as a charity, politician, newspaper or just doing business to business marketing. (See the rule for yourself.) It does not cost anything to register. If you are not exempt then you should also subscribe to the portion of the list that covers your area code. There are two kinds of subscription:

• A query subscription that is pay-as-you-go, costing about two dollars per number that you query. This is perfect for those who never cold call and may just want to run a precautionary check now and then on a former client from long ago or a referral that has just come in.
• A download subscription gives you an extract from the list that you can use to look up numbers. It pays off if you are likely to look up more than 75 numbers in a month. The CSV format is the smallest to download and the easiest to use. You can do list lookups with Notepad or a word processor, but be sure to check each number both up and down the list, and don't forget to also check your own company Do Not Call List.

Call Tracker will simplify this for you. We take the download for you and merge it with your company Do Not Call List, so a single lookup serves both lists and all your area codes. Call Tracker is on the internet, so all your employees, wherever they are, have immediate access to all your Do Not Call data. They also have the ability to instantly add any number to your company Do Not Call List. Call Tracker can also track business relationships and permissions to call, so one lookup can tell the whole story. Call Tracker keeps an activity log to make it easy to follow up on a complaint and help minimise the time and money costs of an investigation.

The regulations prohibit us from sharing Do Not Call data with anyone who is not a subscriber. You must therefore have a current subscription to the area code you wish to access. As Registered Third Party Service Providers, according to the provisions made in the Do Not Call List rules, we regularly access your subscription on your behalf, using your download key. This creates proof you are complying with the regulations by having a current copy of the list. We merge this national list data with your company data maintained on Call Tracker, so every lookup you do checks the combined list. We record every lookup with its results as proof you are using both the National Do Not Call List and your own Do Not Call List. We record every addition to your company Do Not Call List as proof you are maintaining it. Every event is serialised and date and time stamped.

Compliance

Things are a bit vague right now, and some leniency can probably be expected during the initial rollout. As time passes we will know more about enforcement of the regulations.

The regulations cover everyone but we can expect enforcement to mainly target larger telemarketing operations that flout the rules. If you are a small business making a good effort to keep within the law then you are likely to be OK. Due diligence means:

1. Registering and subscribing
2. Checking a current copy of the list
3. Maintaining a company Do Not Call List and using it

How do you prove (2) and (3)? Call Tracker records every number you look up, with the results, so you can report by date/time range or phone number all the activity by a particular person or your whole office. This makes it easy to prove you looked a number up, or to find an accidental typographical error. Call Tracker keeps your company Do Not Call List up to date, and also records its use. Call Tracker makes it all available to all your staff, so there are no problems circulating the lists and no danger of using an out of date copy.

If the American experience is anything to go by, then we can expect more than half the private telephone numbers in Canada to end up on the national do not call list. Research suggest that more than 60% of Canadians intend to put their numbers on the National Do Not Call List (NDNCL). In the first week, 2.7 million numbers were registered, and systems were overwhelmed, with consumers who wanted to register complaining they were unable to do so. We can also expect some very serious fines for failing to comply with the regulations. The current legislation provides for fines of $1,500 for individuals, more for corporations, per call. Actual fines of $25,000-35,000 have been levied in the U.S. and something comparable could easily be seen here.

It will be interesting to see what decisions come from the regulator and the courts, but even being investigated and found innocent could prove expensive.

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