‘There is no place to hide when enforcement agencies across borders work together’

A new CRTC agreement with a pair of Mexican telemarketers sends a strong signal that foreign telesales services seeking to call Canada must play by the national rules here, analysts say. They add that much of the credit should go to Andrea Rosen, the commission’s chief compliance and enforcement officer and a former deputy commission at the Competition Bureau. “I always suspected that when Andrea went that there would be some creative solutions,” Sheridan Scott, a partner at Bennett Jones LLP and former head of the Competition Bureau, said in an interview. “This seems to be one of them.” As a senior official responsible for ensuring fair business practices at the Competition Bureau, Rosen's job often involved cooperation with competition counterparts in Mexico and other countries, Scott said. “This is someone who would bring a fair amount of experience to this approach,” she said. “She knows how to do this ... She’s on a global basis as opposed to a national basis.” Announced by the commission Monday, the agreement is a one-sided contract that requires Mexican telemarketers Marketing 4 Sunset Group and Cancun Unlimited to agree to abide by the CRTC’s unsolicited telecommunications regulations and the rules governing its national do-not-call list. The commission pursued the agreement after receiving more than 12,000 consumer complaints against the two affiliated companies over the past few years and after an investigation revealed numerous violations of national telemarketing rules. Many of the complaints and violations related to calls made to numbers listed on the CRTC's do-not-call list and outside of allowable calling hours; or to calls made using restricted automated calling devices, the CRTC noted in letters to the companies in mid-July. A number of Canadian retailers also complained to the commission that the Mexican telemarketers gave consumers the false impression that the two had a commercial relationship, the commission said. Prior commercial relationships are often cause for exemption from telemarketing rules but those did not exist in this case, the CRTC said. “When we looked into it, it turned out that they didn’t have that relationship and that they were not really abiding by the rules of telemarketing in Canada,” Rosen said in an interview with The Wire Report Monday. Rosen, who signed the agreement on the commission’s behalf on Oct. 14, noted that the CRTC solicited the help of the Mexican national consumer protection agency, PROFECO, in securing the deal. PROFECO enforces Mexico’s do-not-call list and the regulator was quick to assist the CRTC in arranging a meeting with the telemarketers, she said. "This kind of endeavour brings to the attention those that do seek to breach the rules and laws of Canada that there is no place to hide when enforcement agencies across borders work together,” Rosen said. “I think in all areas of law enforcement you’ll find that people try to take advantage of borders. To the extent that law enforcement can, we try to make those borders disappear.” The commission is trying to enforce the do-not-call list and will be doing the same under the provisions of new anti-spam legislation that is set to come into force in the next few months. But the CRTC faces obstacles when it comes to enforcing the rules on foreign companies because they don’t fall under Canada's jurisdiction or the CRTC’s purview, Hank Intven, a communications lawyer and telecom expert at McCarthy Tétrault in Toronto, said in an interview. The do-not-call list was received with skepticism in some quarters when it was first released in late 2008 in part because registered companies would pay a fee to receive a list of phone numbers they were instructed not to call. “There was lots of speculation that offshore telemarketers were actually buying the do-not-call list simply for the purpose of targeting people on the list, rather than the opposite,” he said. It’s examples like this that highlight the need for the commission to come up with creative solutions to help enforce Canadian laws in other jurisdictions, Intven said. “I regard this as very good news for consumers that the commission is reaching out with regulatory agencies in another country in order to ensure it can enforce the law,” he said. “The commission deserves kudos for this. I think it bodes well.” He also agreed that Rosen’s past experience was important to the deal’s success. “The CRTC has less of a history of international cooperation,” he said. “Bringing someone like Andrea in, with her background, has made it more possible and much easier for the commission to do this.” Rosen hinted that other such deals might be in the works—but stopped short of what they might be. “We are bolstering our support around the world,” she said. “We are trying to create good relationships with our counterparts around the world and there will be some news forthcoming on that in the next few weeks.” Intven said that similar, future deals could build on the new arrangement with Mexico. Still, he noted it is only one deal and that there are plenty of other foreign telemarketers who may try to harass Canadians from the safer confines of less regulated countries. “But that’s a long way down the road,” he said, reiterating that the deal is good for consumers. “I don’t want to diminish from the importance of this step. I think it’s a very good signal that the commission is interested in implementing its mandate internationally.” nkyonka@thewirereport.ca

‘There is no place to hide when enforcement agencies across borders work together’

News | 10/18/2011 4:58 pm EDT

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