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july 2014 BCBusiness 31 jeremy bruneel intel W hen Canada's anti-spam legislation kicks into effect on July 1, a lot of businesses that don't think it applies to them will likely be in for a rude shock. The new law, known informally as CASL, or Canada's Anti-spam Legislation, targets the usual spam practices, like automated harvesting of email addresses and mass mail-outs of deceptive advertising. However, the key provision that will affect most businesses is a prohibition against "sending of commercial electronic messages without the recipient's consent." In other words, any email, tweet or text message that might be deemed to be commercial in intent will be illegal if you haven't got prior consent from the recipient. The penalties are huge: up to $1 million for individuals found guilty of spamming, and $10 million for companies. The law will be enforced by the CRTC, and in addition any person or organization can launch a lawsuit against someone they think is guilty of spamming. As with all legislation, the devil is in the details, notes Chris Bennett, a partner with Davis LLP in Vancouver: "There are so many questions with this legislation that we don't know the answers to at this point," he says, including what constitutes a commercial message and how to determine consent, whether explicit or implied. "So I think the advice at this point is you better just assume that it's spam if it's got anything to do with marketing, which it probably does unless it's an invitation for a bike ride." And even that invitation could be considered spam, Bennett adds, if the ride is in any way related to work. A tweet or email doesn't have to be an explicit selling proposition in order to be illegal; it's the intent that counts. According to the legislation, if one of the purposes of the message is "to encourage participation in a commercial activity," then it's spam. So is networking now illegal? If you invite someone, electronically, to meet for drinks, how do you know that invitation might not be interpreted as intended to "encourage commercial activity"? I t ' s y o u r b u s I n e s s Spam Nation According to the federal government, Canada is among the world leaders in spamming, and it's time to crack down. The problem is, almost all of us may be guilty by David Jordan l a w 07/14 y 3 2 v i s u a l l e a r n i n g 3 5 h u m a n r e s o u r c e s 3 7 i n d i a W p030-037-Intel_july.indd 31 2014-05-29 10:14 AM