Canadian Do Not Call list ‘benefiting the great majority', says survey

CANADA-- Eighty percent of Canadians who have signed up to the country's Do Not Call (DNCL) list have said they have received fewer marketing phonecalls since it was introduced last year, according to a new Harris-Decima survey.

However, 13% of people on the list said that they had received “unprecedented levels” of calls from telemarketers.

Brendan Wycks, executive director of the Marketing Research and Intelligence Association, (MRIA) who commissioned the survey, said: “The DNCL is benefiting the great majority of those who've registered…There's no evidence to support the contention that there's a lot of fraudulent use of the list going on.”

The DNCL had previously come under fire from consumers complaining that telemarketing calls were on the increase and Wycks wrote in the MRIA's magazine in February that the jury was still out on the service.

Wycks said the increased marketing calls Canadians had been receiving may come from the US, where marketers “don't know or don't care if targets have registered with Canada's list”.

He said Canada's federal regulator should “beef up” its enforcement activities and try to strike a reciprocal enforcement agreement with its US counterpart.

Market research agencies and polling firms are among a number of exemptions from Canada's DNCL, which led campaigner Michael Geist to launch his own do-not-call service, iOptOut.

Author: James Verrinder

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