Well September is almost here (ALREADY?!?) and as we have all been accustom too over the last three years, a bit more waiting is in the future for any CASL regulation updates. That said, we have been able to gather a few interesting items of note around the current status of the regulations.
These are partly due to the recent changes to many cabinet ministers and the appointment of a new Minister of Industry, James Moore, [1] and some of the other issues the Canadian government is currently dealing with. But there is good news in this as well! I spent some time learning about the new minister and after reading several of the recent blog articles [2] by Minister Moore I get a feeling that he has a very strong passion towards consumer rights and protection. Minister Moore's most recent posts [3] show that he will not back down on Big Telco's push to keep their regulated monopoly on your cell phone contracts. Why do I mention this? Well… if Minister Moore is as passionate about protecting consumers cell phone options, it's probably safe to say that he will want to protect consumer's inboxes as well. In fact, I have been told directly that the Minister wants to get CASL moving again after almost 2 years of very little movement, and that the regulations will be available later this year. This is obviously later than originally expected but I think we can cut him a little slack here, Minister Moore has a big portfolio and CASL is only one part of it. Hopefully a part that he will soon get off his table!
Several groups we at Inbox Marketer participate in are sharing various types of information during the group discussions and many sound like hopeful wishes and rumours from the various groups. These rumours range from; Industry Canada will simply put this law on the shelf and forget about it to, the minister hasn't even looked at the law and is letting it slide for the time being and the regulations will still be made public later this month. There are others too about changes to the scope of the bill to limit only certain types of CEMs, amendments and proposed legislative changes. I don't currently believe in any of these at this point as my direct information would indicate movement by the Industry Canada is moving forward under new direction and a renewed momentum in pushing CASL towards completion, it will just be a little delay from the expected dates under the former minister (expected in September).
While I'm tired of trying to predict the actual release date of the regulations, I’ve been wrong too many times, my discussion with Industry Canada make me hopeful that we will be presented with final regulations sometime this fall (my bets are on November), and that enforcement will still start 12 months after regulation publication - just in time for the 2014 holidays, or the start of 2015. I’ve been told Industry Canada’s ultimate goal is to have these finalized and ready within this calendar year.
Stay tuned for more CASL updates as we have them!
[1] https://inboxmarketer.com/blog https://twitter.com/jamesmoore_org
[2] http://www.jamesmoore.org/frontpage/
[3] https://inboxmarketer.com/blog http://www.jamesmoore.org/august132013/
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