Take it easy on small business owners for the first year when it comes to enforcing Canada’s Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL), the Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB) urged Industry Minister James Moore and the CRTC in a June 30 open letter.
The CRTC must work with small businesses to educate them for the first year the controversial laws, which come into full force July 1, are in place, said the letter, with the focus moved away from enforcement and punishment.
The CFIB recommends that the CRTC not issue fines for non-compliance over the next year. It also suggests that businesses be offered support and templates, and said that companies that send fewer than a pre-determined number of emails should be exempted from the rules.
Complying with the rules will not only be difficult, said the CFIB, but it will be costly as well.
“…CASL is structured in such a way that all businesses – regardless of whether they engage in anything related to mass emailing – will see their regulatory compliance burden increase significantly, and in the minds of many small businesses, unnecessarily,” said CFIB president and CEO Dan Kelly and executive vice-president Laura Jones in the letter.
The letter highlighted the results of a CFIB study released June 25 that found that only 15% of small business owners are aware of the new law’s requirements and that most have done nothing to get ready for the new rules. The survey also found that 15% of respondents had never heard of the rules.
Many small businesses have tried to contact the CRTC’s telephone information line only to be met by an automated message saying nobody was available to help them, said the letter.
The full letter can be found here.
