Unscrupulous telemarketers mining the do-not-call registry for targets will face severe penalties, Industry Minister Tony Clement warned yesterday.
"An abuse of the do-not-call list is unconscionable, not to mention illegal, and I sympathize with those Canadians who are being harassed by unscrupulous telemarketers," Mr. Clement said in a statement yesterday.
Mr. Clement's comments were made amid increasing complaints from people who registered their phone numbers on the list, only to find they are getting more calls than ever. The minister began looking into the problem after The Globe and Mail reported Friday that the CRTC was selling the do-not-call list to companies for a nominal fee.
This unintended effect is that some appear to be using the data as a source of names and contact information.
"We've been sold out," said Kelly Potter of Nanaimo, B.C. "You give your number to be not called and all of a sudden everybody can call you."
The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, which administers the registry, will "aggressively pursue" anyone breaking the rules, Mr. Clement said.
He noted that large fines of as much as $15,000 a call can be levied for abusing the registry, although it's not clear how foreign scammers could be made to pay up.
Four months after the federal do-not-call list became active - leading to a rush of registrations - many Canadians say they are still getting pestered.
John MacDonald is one of them. The Fredericton resident doesn't get a lot of pitches from telemarketers, but every now and then his phone rings with a familiar robo-call. Starting with the blast of a nautical horn, it's an offer for a cruise that he assumes is a scam.
"I just haven't figured out a way to get them to stop because it's just a recorded message getting you to call them and I'm not that gullible to fall for that," Mr. MacDonald said in an e-mail exchange.
Mr. Clement said he sympathizes with Canadians on the list who are still being harassed. He said he had spoken to CRTC chair Konrad von Finckenstein and stressed the need for abusers to be found and punished.
"The CRTC chair shares the concern that Canadians expect and deserve that investigations into do-not-call list complaints should proceed quickly, and that strong penalties are to be imposed on abusers," Mr. Clement said.
Denis Carmel, a spokesman for the CRTC, said last week that if a foreign telemarketer abuses the registry to sell a product in Canada, the Canadian distributor of that product would be held accountable.
It would be "another story, though, if the telemarketer had no Canadian connection. In that case, we would issue a fine and we'll see how that goes," he said.
Professor Michael Geist, who holds the Canada Research Chair of Internet and e-commerce law at the University of Ottawa, said yesterday the fact that six million people have put their names on the list shows telemarketing is a hot-button topic.
But Dr. Geist, who provides a free do-not-call registry of his own through ioptout.ca, has been a critic of the federal list from the start. He reiterated yesterday that it is "a lemon" dumped on the CRTC by politicians who created a flawed system.
"This was promised as a solution and it is clear the current system is so full of loopholes and problems it's not the solution that was promised."
Dr. Geist would like to see fewer exemptions and stricter penalties, including looking at establishing mutual enforcement policies with the United States.
"I think the CRTC has to get very serious, with significant penalties for businesses that abuse this," he said.
