At least one participant who attended a webinar on Jan. 29 on federal anti-spam legislation has mixed feelings about the federal rules.
The Olds and District Chamber of Commerce organized the webinar and it was led by members of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce and the Retail Council of Canada.
The key piece to the legislation is businesses must get consent from a potential customer before that business sends out any electronic messages of a commercial or marketing nature to those customers.
Penalties for not doing so may be as high as $1 million if an individual sends a commercial email to someone who didn't ask to be solicited, to $10 million for an organization or business.
The legislation was drafted in 2013 and will come into effect on July 1.
Much of the webinar, hosted at the Olds Municipal Library, focused on how to get and manage consent. When sending electronic messages to those who have already agreed to receive them, a business must also include an opt-out option allowing the receiver to discontinue receiving the messages.
Shawn White, manager of member experience for O-NET, a community-owned Internet service provider in Olds, said while O-NET currently doesn't do much business through commercial emails, he was nonetheless interested in the implications of the new rules.
ìThere'll be some analysis and assessment work and we'll just have to make sure that we collect those approvals from our customers and make sure that we keep them. I think those types of businesses that rely heavily on email for getting their customers are going to have to rethink their game plan,î he said, noting that businesses will need to rely on customers searching them out, word of mouth and other more traditional methods.
Oral consent to receive messages is acceptable, but a business must have a record of that consent.
Businesses must also include the person and the organization that sent the email in the body of the message.
Family relationships, personal business relationships, internal organizational relationships and contractor-supplier relationships are exempt from the legislation. Business-to-business communications are also exempt from the rules.
The legislation, which is governed by the Canadian Radio-Telecommunications Commission, will be reviewed in 2017.
White said he was puzzled by what prompted the stringent requirements.
ìI'm not sure where that came from. Was it citizens complaining to the government causing this analysis and then reaction from the government?î he said.
As for the permission a business needs to send commercial emails to customers, White said it makes sense from an enforcement perspective to put the onus on businesses to prove they had consent rather than putting the onus on a customer.
ìI think it's going to make a lot of extra work for businesses and at the end of the day I'm not sure how much spam it is going to cut down,î he said, adding there are still many outstanding questions about the legislation.
The webinar is available on the Retail Council of Canada and Canadian Chamber of Commerce websites.
