A new Canadian law comes into effect on 1 July 2014. It is meant to help control the amount of spam email (or any electronic communications, really) that gets to you. On the surface, that is great. However, can you say ‘Canada Do Not Call List’ without rolling your eyes in disgust? It will remain to be seen how useful this new legislation will be in combatting the electronic junk that continues to bombard us. I suspect the ‘bad’ people will continue to ignore the new law, just as they do the Do Not Call list. But I am getting cynical in my old age…

You have probably been receiving a lot of messages asking you to opt-in to email communications from the various companies with which you deal; especially those that send out newsletters. They are trying to comply with this new legislation. I was only made aware of the law within the last couple of months. But, I cannot find any specific guidance on what backend systems need to be in place to comply with the law. It appears that businesses will have to make their own tracking system. (Thankfully, there is a three year implementation phase to get these monitoring processes in place.)

Here is a link to the basic information I have been able to find: http://cfib.ca/a6267e After 1 July 2014 the onus is on the sender of any Commercial Electronic Message (CEM) to prove they have your express or implied consent to do so. That means businesses of all types will have to have a system in place to keep track of those consents, as well as a means to reconfirm an implied consent after two years from the start of the relationship.

I have to go now to start working on my system to manage this new Canadian business requirement. If you are an existing client, expect a message from me!