Canada's National Do-Not-Call List (DNCL) went live yesterday amidst some startup outages. It seems to be working fine now, and you can go ahead and register your phone number at the above link and say goodbye to telemarketers once and for all ! The process is very straightforward - just enter your number and thats it; took me a couple of minutes to get on the DNCL. As per the regulation, telemarketers can't call registered numbers on the DNCL, though there are a few exceptions - newspapers, political parties, charities and businesses with whom you have an existing business relationship can still call. In any case, it should greatly reduce the number of calls received from Canadian telemarketers, if not totally eliminate them. I wonder how much effective it will be against overseas telemarketers though, as they seem to have little regard for Canadian law. Hopefully there are tough provisions in the law against Canadian businesses who employ their services.
This regulation was passed in 2005, and it took it 3 years to become a reality ! There is talk about tougher anti-spam regulation in Canadian politics these days - lets see how that works out.
You can also get on the DNCL by calling these numbers: 1-866-580-3625, 1-888-362-5889.
