Telemarketing and Unwanted Calls

• Beware of calls offering to lower your credit card interest rates
• Beware of emails and calls claiming to represent the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA)
• Beware of vacation offers from callers claiming to represent well-known companies
• Illegal calls from people claiming to be from the National DNCL

If you live in Canada, you can choose to reduce the number of telemarketing calls you receive by registering your residential, wireless, fax or VoIP telephone number on the National DNCL. If your telephone number is not linked to a business line, then  you are considered to be a consumer for the purposes of the National DNCL. Here’s what you need to know:

Telemarketing:

• What you should know about telemarketing in Canada
• Summary of Options Currently Available to Canadians to Manage Unwanted Calls
• Register for the National DNCL
  • About registering and who can still call you
• File a complaint about a telemarketing call
  • Watch our video on how to file a telemarketing complaint
  • Know if the telemarketer calling you is following the rules. Try our interactive simulation
• How to protect yourself from scammers
  • Avoiding 900 or 976 call fraud
  • Illegal calls from people claiming to be from the National DNCL
• How the CRTC Helps Protect Canadians
• How your complaints help the CRTC
• Caller ID Spoofing

Phone calls during a federal election: What you should know about rogue and misleading phone calls during federal elections.

Being a telemarketer means your business uses telecommunications technologies to make unsolicited calls or send faxes to consumers for the purpose of solicitation. Here’s what you need to know:

• Unsolicited Telecommunications Rules
• Understand telemarketing rules for compliance
• Register your organization with the National DNCL
• Rules for political candidates, parties and organizations
• Obligations for the insurance,  real estate and financial services industries
• Paying subscription fees and downloading standardized file formats

The Voter Contact Registry was created to help protect Canadians from rogue and misleading telephone calls during federal elections, and to ensure that those who contact voters during an election do so transparently.

Certain entities who call Canadians during an election period for any purpose related to an election must register with the CRTC within 48 hours of making the first call.

The CRTC is responsible for establishing and maintaining the Registry.