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Compliance and Enforcement Order CRTC 2025-161

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Gatineau, 30 June 2025

Unsolicited Telecommunications Fees – Telemarketing regulatory costs for 2025–26 and fees paid for 2024–25

  1. The Unsolicited Telecommunications Fees Regulations (the Regulations)Footnote 1 came into force on 1 April 2013 and were subsequently amended on 20 July 2015.Footnote 2 The Regulations prescribe fees that will be assessed to recover the Commission’s costs to investigate and enforce the National Do Not Call List (the Commission’s “telemarketing regulatory costs,” as defined in subsection 4(4) of the Regulations).
  2. Subsection 4(4) of the Regulations defines “telemarketing regulatory costs” as follows:


    The telemarketing regulatory costs of the Commission for a given fiscal year are the portion of the costs of the Commission’s activities for that fiscal year, as set out in the Commission’s Expenditure Plan published in Part III of the Estimates of the Government of Canada and, if applicable, the Supplementary Estimates of the Government of Canada, that are attributable to the Commission’s responsibilities under section 41.2 of the Telecommunications Act and that are not recovered under any regulation made under section 68 of that Act.

  3. Under subsection 5(1) of the Regulations, the Commission is required to publish each year a public notice of the Commission’s telemarketing regulatory costs.
  4. The Commission hereby announces in this public notice that the estimated telemarketing regulatory costs for fiscal year 2025–26 total $3.3 million.
  5. Under subsection 5(2) of the Regulations, the Commission is to publish, each year in a public notice, the total of all amounts paid under subsection 3(1) of the Regulations in the last completed fiscal year. In accordance with subsection 3(2) of the Regulations, the determination must be made no later than 90 days after the end of each fiscal year to determine actual fees payable by those persons who subscribed to the National Do Not Call List and paid the Commission’s component of the fees.
  6. The Commission hereby announces that the total of all amounts paid under subsection 3(1) of the Regulations in the last completed fiscal year (2024–25) was $2,888,766. The total of all amounts paid in 2024–25 was less than the estimated $3.3 million in regulatory costs indicated in Compliance and Enforcement Order 2024-144. As a result, in accordance with subsection 4(1) of the Regulations, since the fees payable for 2024–25 did not exceed the regulatory costs paid by the persons referenced in paragraph 5 above, no refund is required.
  7. The Commission issues this order by majority decision. A concurring opinion by Commissioner Bram Abramson is attached.

Secretary General

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Concurring opinion of Commissioner Bram Abramson

  1. This is a routine cost-recovery decision. It is consistent with the Commission’s long-standing framework for overseeing unsolicited voice telecommunications, where telemarketer registrations fund regulatory oversight. But the world it was built for is gone. How Canadians use, rely on, and trust the telephone system has changed radically.
  2. I therefore write separately to raise a foundational question. Why, in 2025, do we still regulate unsolicited voice telemarketing on an opt-out basis, when unsolicited commercial electronic messages default to an opt-in framework? Is there still a principled justification for this split? Or, on the contrary, has the structure of our funding model boxed us in?
  3. To start at the beginning: the Commission, like many of its global peers, has long regulated nuisance communications. We began in 1985 by restricting the use of Automated Dialing-Announcing Devices (ADADs). Even then, a dissenting trio of Commissioners (Coupal, Gower, and McRae) wanted to go further, calling for outright prohibition in warning that “the possible economic and social advantages of ADADs do not outweigh the negative aspects to subscribers”.Footnote 1
  4. The 1993 Telecommunications Act mandated that we regulate unsolicited telecommunications, balancing inconvenience and nuisance against freedom of expression.Footnote 2 Telemarketing and ADAD Rules, including Internal Do-Not-Call List (DNCL) governance (1994),Footnote 3 were expanded to faxes (1996),Footnote 4 new competitive local exchange carriers (1997),Footnote 5 and resellers and Internet-based phone providers (2001).Footnote 6 By 2004 we saw considerable merit in an opt-in National DNCL.Footnote 7 By 2007 we had set in motionFootnote 8 three-,Footnote 9 five-,Footnote 10 and six-year,Footnote 11 then permanent,Footnote 12 National DNCL registrations.Footnote 13 By 2013Footnote 14 the Unsolicited Telecommunications Fees Regulations (the Regulations) had locked in a funding mechanism that ties our oversight directly to National DNCL registration and subscription by telemarketers.
  5. The current decision is part of that scheme. It notifies the public, as the Regulations require, of our actual telemarketing regulatory costs for 2024–25 and our estimated costs for 2025–26. It allows the wheels of our cost recovery mechanism to continue to turn. I concur in it. But I write separately to register a deeper misgiving.
  6. Back in 2004, when we saw considerable merit in an opt-out National DNCL, we were guided by our opt-out Internal DNCL and by the similar approach taken by our neighbours to the south. But fast-forward two decades. Canada has adopted e-commerce protection legislation (CASL) built around an opt-in model for commercial electronic messages.Footnote 15 Synchronous voice telephony’s role in daily life has receded. Robocalls, unregistered telemarketing, and impersonation fraud have surged, now assisted increasingly by AI. Against this backdrop, is an opt-out model still in the public interest?
  7. That dystopian backdrop is less the fault of law-abiding telemarketers or survey researchers than of illicit and unregistered telemarketers, cybercriminals, and data-driven scammers. The Commission has mandated a growing battery of techniques like blocking blatantly illegitimate calls,Footnote 16 reducing caller ID spoofing,Footnote 17 increasing traceability,Footnote 18 and Canadianizing the STIR/SHAKEN standardFootnote 19 (for the still-limited share of Internet Protocol-interconnected calls).Footnote 20 Telephony providers have likewise pressed suspicious-call labelling and filtering intermediaries into service.Footnote 21 Yet the issue remains: when trust in the model has eroded, and the adversary risk from live automated threats and data-gathering impersonators greater than ever, should we not rethink the model itself? Do unregistered phone numbers reflect informed choice—or lack of awareness and disengagement?
  8. If the latter, why maintain a complex system of registrations and subscriptions? Why not follow CASL’s lead and make the rules that apply to registered numbers the default? Is it time telemarketing joined other unsolicited commercial electronic communications to become opt-in, subject to existing business relationships?
  9. The answer may have less to do with public policy than with institutional inertia. The National DNCL is more than just a consumer protection tool: it is a revenue mechanism hardwired into legislation. What if that mechanism has become a regulatory artefact that inhibits modernization?
  10. The order to which this concurring opinion is appended correctly administers the system as it is, and as it has stayed even as the telephone system has changed fundamentally. But the old way of funding, and therefore of regulating, is embedded into sections 41.1, 41.2, and 41.21 of the Telecommunications Act. I have written separately to flag that constraint and ask how we might chart a path beyond it.
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