Canada's Anti-Spam Legislation. A New PrivacyWorks Series.

Written By Guilda Rostama

Welcome to our new series on Canada’s Anti-Spam legislation, more commonly known as CASL. CASL has been recognized worldwide as one of the toughest laws of its kind and even for Canadians, it can be a challenge to know how to comply with it. If you’ve heard the term CASL before but were never sure what it means or how it applies to you, you’re not the only one.

Basically, CASL is a major privacy law that covers some of the big questions that any Canadian business should consider when sending any type of Commercial Electronic Messaging. And it applies to almost everyone. For example:  

  • Do you send marketing communications/newsletters to your customers? Yes, it applies!

  • Do you implement cookies and other tracking tools to advertise or for analytics? Yes, it applies!

  • Do you install computer programs for your customers…well, yes…it applies!

Therefore, it goes without saying that CASL is so much more than an” anti-spam” law. Interestingly, CASL created quite a stir when it was adopted by the Parliament (its constitutionality was even challenged in Court because some people considered that it violated the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms). But now, CASL is often forgotten, and it has become a little bit like the “he-who-must-not-be-named” of Canadian laws.

Although CASL is no longer in the spotlight as its sister-law PIPEDA makes organizations that don’t comply risk serious penalties, including criminal charges, civil charges, personal liability, and penalties up to $10 million.

So, even if CASL compliance was not on your top-priority to-do list until today, now may be the time to start paying more attention to it. And the big question is the following: how to comply with CASL?

To find the answer to this question, don’t worry: you will not have to go through pages and pages of complicated legal analysis to find out how CASL may impact your organization. We are launching a series of practical articles and useful guidance on CASL that will help you in your compliance exercise.

Guilda Rostama

Guilda Rostama is a GDPR specialist. As a fully-qualified French lawyer, Guilda has a PhD in law, and holds the Master of Law and Internet Technology from Paris Sorbonne, as well as the LLB of the University of Sheffield, United Kingdom, and the CIPP/C. Before moving to Canada in 2021, Guilda was a senior legal counsel in the Economic Affairs department in the CNIL (the French Data Protection authority) for more than four years. During her tenure in the CNIL, she was actively involved in building recommendations and guidelines for organizations implementing the GDPR. She was also the leader of the Social Media Expert subgroup in the European Data Protection Board (EDPB).

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What is a CEM? An Introduction to Canada’s Anti-Spam Legislation.
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