What CASL Means When a US Client's List Includes Canadian Buyers

A US client hands over a target list for a first campaign. Most of it is American. A slice of it, often more than anyone expected, sits in Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary, or Montreal. The client sells into Canada, so nobody flags it, and those contacts flow into the same sequence as everyone else.

That is where agencies get into trouble. Canada's anti-spam law, usually called CASL, does not work like CAN-SPAM. The default under CAN-SPAM is that you can email a business contact until they opt out. The default under CASL is that you need consent before the first commercial message goes out.

This guide covers what CASL requires, the narrow route most B2B outbound relies on, and a per-client rule agencies can run before the first send. It is not legal advice. When a client has real Canadian volume, they should talk to Canadian counsel.

When CASL applies

According to the CRTC's CASL FAQ, the law applies when a commercial electronic message is sent from, or accessed using, a computer system in Canada. A US agency sending on behalf of a US client is still covered when the recipient reads the message in Canada. The client being American does not take the message out of scope.

The penalties are real enough to take seriously. The CRTC lists maximum administrative monetary penalties of $1 million per violation for individuals and $10 million per violation for businesses.

The three things every message needs

The text of the Act (section 6) and the government's "Getting consent to send email" guide set out three requirements:

1. Consent, either express or implied.
2. Identification: the name of the sender and of anyone on whose behalf the message is sent, plus a mailing address and a phone number, email address, or website. The contact details must stay valid for at least 60 days after sending.
3. An unsubscribe mechanism that is easy to use and free, with requests handled within 10 business days.

For an agency, item 2 has a detail worth catching. Section 6 asks for the person who sent the message and, if different, the person on whose behalf it was sent. When an agency runs the sending for a client, ask the client's counsel whether both names belong in the message. Most cold email signatures name the client and nobody else.

The route most B2B outbound relies on: conspicuous publication

CASL has a form of implied consent for addresses that people publish themselves. The CRTC FAQ says it applies only when all three conditions hold:

1. The person published the address, or caused it to be published, conspicuously.
2. The publication does not say they do not want unsolicited commercial messages.
3. The message is relevant to their business role, functions, or duties.

Each condition is narrower than it looks.

"Conspicuously published" is not "findable." The CRTC says an address that needs a specific query in a corporate database to surface is not conspicuously published. The standard is something like a company team page or a trade publication, the kind of thing a search engine indexes. An address that came out of an enrichment tool is not proof of publication by itself.

Look for the "no solicitations" line. A contact page that says "no unsolicited sales emails" kills implied consent for the addresses on it.

Relevance has to be specific. Gowling WLG's CASL guide notes that a job title alone is not enough. The sender has to be able to say how the message relates to the recipient's business role. A message about payroll software to a head of payroll fits. The same message to a marketing coordinator at the same company does not.

The CRTC guidance on implied consent also says senders carry the burden of proof. It suggests keeping screenshots or contemporaneous records of where and when the address was published.

A per-client rule for Canadian contacts

Here is the rule we would put in every US client's workspace before the first send:

1. Tag geography at import. Any contact whose company or location is in Canada goes into a separate segment, not the main sequence.
2. Ask the client one question. Do they want to prospect Canada in this campaign at all? If the answer is "not really," hold the segment. Losing a slice of a first campaign costs far less than a CASL problem.
3. If yes, require proof per contact. For each Canadian contact, store the URL where the address was published, the capture date, a snapshot, and a one-line note on why the message fits that person's role. No proof, no send.
4. Check the signature. Name the sender and the client, include a mailing address, and add a working unsubscribe link that stays live for at least 60 days.
5. Honor opt-outs everywhere. An unsubscribe from a Canadian contact goes on the client's suppression list for every channel and every future campaign.

This mirrors the rule we suggested for holding EU and UK prospects out of a client's first US campaign. The pattern is the same: a different legal regime gets a different queue, and the client makes a deliberate decision before anything sends.

Where GTM fits

GTM runs each client in an isolated workspace, keeps provenance on every field, and enforces a compliance gate in the database: no send goes out without a verdict and an unsubscribe URL. GTM is US-only today, so Canadian contacts belong in a hold queue, not a live sequence. That is the behavior we think every agency should default to.

If you run outbound for several clients and want that kind of gate on every send, join the waitlist.

Sources

• CRTC, "Frequently Asked Questions about Canada's Anti-Spam Legislation": https://crtc.gc.ca/eng/com500/faq500.htm
• CRTC, "Guidance on Implied Consent": https://www.crtc.gc.ca/eng/com500/guide.htm
• Government of Canada, "Getting consent to send email": https://www.ised-isde.canada.ca/site/canada-anti-spam-legislation/en/getting-consent-send-email
• Canada's Anti-Spam Legislation, section 6: https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/E-1.6/section-6.html
• Gowling WLG, "Doing Business in Canada: CASL": https://gowlingwlg.com/en-ae/insights-resources/guides/2023/doing-business-in-canada-casl