The CRTC has a consultation underway to consider the delegation of the Commission’s investigative powers with regard to Unsolicited Telecommunications Rules complaints.
The consultation is a perfectly understandable process to make use of new bodies that can likely be better resourced to focus on such specific consumer complaints.
However, the CRTC has added a little twist that seems to be an attempt to revisit the exemptions to the Do Not Call List rules that Parliament created in its amendments to the Telecom Act. It has asked for comment on:
the Commission’s intent to establish a rule to require all telemarketers and clients of telemarketers, including those exclusively making telecommunications that are exempt from the National DNCL Rules, to register with, and provide information to, the National DNCL operator and to pay fees that may be charged by the third party who will be responsible for the investigation of Unsolicited Telecommunications Rules complaints. [emphasis added]
The Act seems pretty clear that exempt groups are exempt from this kind of registration:
[Section 41.7(1)] An order made by the Commission that imposes a prohibition or requirement under section 41 that relates to information contained in any database or any information, administrative or operational system administered under section 41.2 for the purpose of a National DNCL does not apply in respect of a telecommunication…
and then continues to enumerate the exempt types of communications.
How does the CRTC reconcile an intent to have exempted groups “register with, and provide information to, the National DNCL operator”, when the Act specifically exempts precisely the requirements for such information?
As much as people may not like the exempted types of telemarketing calls, these were established by parliament. As such, the CRTC has no business asking for advance registration and fees from these groups.
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