Canadian Government Fines Company $1.1M For Violating New Anti-Spam Law

Canada enacted new anti-spam legislation effective July 1, 2014 and it seems they really mean business.  Yesterday, the CRTC (Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission), Canada’s equivalent of the FCC, fined the company Compu-Finder for breaking Canada’s anti-spam law. CRTC says Compu-Finder sent emails without the recipient’s consent, as well as messages “in which the unsubscribe mechanisms did not function properly.”

The CRTC is the Canadian equivalent of the USA’s FCC

Compu-Finder is a Quebec-based corporate training company and the CRTC statement says analysis of complaints to its Spam Reporting Centre shows Compu-Finder accounts for 26% of all complaints in its industry sector.  Compu-Finder’s emails are said to have pitched training courses to businesses on topics such as management and social media.

“This case stood out because of the flagrant nature of the violation,” said chief compliance and enforcement officer Manon Bombardier.  The CRTC alleges the company sent commercial emails to consumers without their consent and did not allow recipients to unsubscribe from the mailings. “They have not made any effort to change their business practices.... People were unsubscribing and they were still getting emails”.

The CRTC has received more than 245,000 complaints since the first phase of the anti-spam law kicked in. Consumers continue to submit about 1,000 complaints a day, she said.  So, it seems that if we Canadians continue to complain about companies violating the new anti-spam legislation, we can at least have some confidence that the CRTC will follow through with an investigation and impose fines, as a first level of enforcement, on the companies responsible.

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