Rules
How to Write a CASL-Compliant Email Template for Canadian Subscribers
Writing a CASL email template for Canadian subscribers means naming the sender, keeping consent records and honouring unsubscribe requests within 10 business days.
What to take away
- The CRTC enforces Canada's Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL), with the Competition Bureau and the Privacy Commissioner covering related parts of the same message.
- A compliant template identifies the sender, gives a physical mailing address and carries a working unsubscribe actioned within 10 business days.
- Consent records hold the date, the source and the wording agreed to, for three years after consent is withdrawn.
- The CRTC can issue a notice of violation naming the sender, and an officer or director can be named personally.
- Quebec's language law adds a French duty that an English-only unsubscribe line does not meet.
Who has jurisdiction over commercial email in Canada
CASL is federal law, so a sender in Winnipeg and a sender in Halifax work from the same text. The CRTC handles the sending rules and consent. The Competition Bureau handles false or misleading representations, such as a subject line that overstates the offer. The Privacy Commissioner covers address harvesting and program installation. The Government of Canada's CASL page sets out these duties and the consent categories.
Provincial differences do not come from CASL. They arrive through consumer protection law and language law, which is where a template built for one province can fail in another.
What a compliant disclosure contains
Section 6 of CASL lists what a commercial electronic message must carry. The sender has to be identified, contact information has to be given, and an unsubscribe mechanism has to work. Contact information means a physical mailing address, so a reply-to address alone is not enough.
| Element | In the template | Placement |
|---|---|---|
| Sender identity | Legal name of the business | Header |
| Mailing address | Physical address, not an inbox | Footer |
| Unsubscribe | Working link or reply instruction | Footer, above the fold |
| Handling window | No more than 10 business days | Beside the link |
Those blocks are part of the layout, not lines retyped for each send, and the Email Marketing Template guide treats them as fixed furniture.
A template can collect consent properly and still fail, because the unsubscribe line sits four scrolls down in grey text.
The mechanism must stay live for at least 60 days after the send, which rules out links that expire with the promotion.
Records to keep for consent
CASL puts the burden of proof on the sender. When a complaint arrives, the sender must produce the record that shows consent, not the recipient's memory of signing up. Express consent is a positive act, so a pre-ticked box does not record one.
- Date and time consent was given
- Source, such as a web form or a phone call
- The wording the subscriber agreed to
- The unsubscribe request and the date it was actioned
- Any third-party list, with its consent chain
Implied consent exists, for instance through an existing business relationship, but it expires, and the expiry date belongs in the same record. A Campaign Brief Template is a workable home for the consent basis of a send.
What happens if you do not comply
The CRTC can issue a notice of violation. The notice names the sender, describes the conduct and sets a penalty payable within the period stated, or one that can be contested before the CRTC. Penalties scale with the size of the business, and the Act allows a separate penalty against an officer or director who directed the conduct.
Two other outcomes matter day to day. The sender can be ordered to stop the practice, and consent records can be demanded in an inquiry. A business that cannot produce them has nothing to show. The 10 business day clock starts when an unsubscribe request arrives, so a Content Calendar Template entry is worth keeping as proof it was noted.
Where the rules differ by place
Quebec's Charter of the French Language requires commercial communications to consumers in that province to be in French. An unsubscribe line reading only "Unsubscribe" leaves a Quebec recipient without a French option. That duty sits outside CASL and applies on top of it. Federal institutions have their own bilingual duty under the Official Languages Act, which is a different obligation from the one on a private sender.
The United States works on an opt-out basis, as the FTC compliance guide explains for CAN-SPAM, so an American list may lawfully be built in a way a Canadian list cannot. A template used in both markets has to hold the stricter Canadian rule, and that decision belongs in the compliance section of Marketing Plan Templates.
Common questions
Does a consent box have to be unticked by default? Express consent needs a positive act by the subscriber, so a box that is already ticked does not record one.
How long are consent records kept? Three years after consent is withdrawn, covering the original consent and the unsubscribe request that ended it.
Is a bilingual unsubscribe line required by CASL? No. It sets one federal standard. The French requirement comes from Quebec's language law for consumer communications in that province.
Does this apply to a template before it is sent? No. CASL applies to the message when it goes out. The template is where the required elements are built in.
