Secretariat Policies

Canadian Anti-Spam Legislation (“CASL”), Policy on

Posted on 20 October 2016

Canadian Anti-Spam Legislation (“CASL”), Policy on

Posted on 20 October 2016

Legislative History:

Endorsed by UEC and PVP; approved by the President April 7, 2016

Approval Authority: President and Vice-Chancellor

Signature: Mamdouh Shoukri

Description:  Establishes policy for the transmission of electronic messages with “commercial” content, and installation of computer programs in the course of a commercial activity, and brings the University into compliance with the Canadian Anti-Spam Legislation (“CASL”)

I. Definitions

  1. “Commercial Activity” means any particular transaction, act or conduct or any regular course of conduct that is of a commercial character, whether or not the person who carries it out does so in the expectation of profit;
  1. “Commercial Electronic Message”(“CEM”) means an electronic message which has as one of its purposes to encourage the Recipient to participate in a commercial activity;
  1. “Electronic Address” means an address for an electronic account to which an electronic message is directed, including but not limited to the address of any email account, social networking account, or cell phone
  1. “Electronic Message” means any message transmitted by electronic media, and includes without limitation emails, texts, Facebook messages, Twitter, Instagram, and other similar social networking messages

II. Policy

  1. Commercial Electronic Messages (CEMs)

It is prohibited for any University employee, governor, officer, agent, or volunteer, using any University electronic communication system or purporting in any way, whether expressly or by implication, to represent the University, to send the holder of an account (the “Recipient”) at an electronic address any commercial electronic message (CEM), unless the following conditions are met:

  1. Before the CEM is sent, the Recipient has consented, either expressly or by implication, to receiving it;
  2. The CEM includes information identifying the sender or the person on whose behalf the message is being sent and providing their contact information; and
  3. The message includes an unsubscribe mechanism, i.e., a means for the Recipient to indicate as simply as possible and at no cost to the Recipient, the wish no longer to receive a specified class of CEMs from the sender or from the person on whose behalf the sender sent the CEM.

All senders must implement systems to track Recipient consents and give effect to requests to unsubscribe.

  1. Computer Programs

It is prohibited for any University employee, governor, officer, agent, or volunteer, in the course of a commercial activity, to install or cause to be installed a computer program on any other person’s computer system, or, having so installed or caused to be installed a computer program, cause an electronic message to be sent from that computer system unless the following conditions are met:

  1. Before the computer program is installed, the owner or authorized user of the computer system has consented expressly to having the computer program installed; or
  2. The installation is in accordance with a court order.

III. Authority

The Board of Governors delegates the authority and responsibility for establishing a CASL compliance program and approving procedures and guidelines under this policy to the University Secretary and General Counsel who serves as Chief Compliance Officer for the purposes of this policy.