Canada's Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL)
On July 1, 2014 Canada's Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL) came into force. CASL prohibits the sending of commercial electronic messages (CEM) without the consent of the recipient. A CEM is a message sent by any means of telecommunication, including a text, sound, voice or image message that encourages the recipient to participate in a commercial activity.
CASL is very new and complex legislation. To guide staff and faculty in ensuring that they comply with CASL, we have provided this decision flowchart.
If your unit sends out commercial messages we ask that you include full contact information and an unsubscribe message in all CEMs being sent out. The unsubscribe mechanism needs to be quick and easy for someone to opt-out of receiving future departmental communications.
If you require assistance in creating your opt-out message contact the University Secretariat and we will provide recommended language.
The maximum penalty for non-compliance with CASL is a fine of up to $10 million for an organization for each violation, and $1 million for an individual.
Questions?
We ask all departments, staff, and faculty communicating on behalf of the university to please bring any concerns or questions about compliance or best practice to the attention of the University Secretariat at: secretariat@trentu.ca