Summary

  • On 27 October the CRTC imposed a CAD 106,000 penalty on Esprit Habitat for 106 unsolicited-telemarketing violations. Some calls came from its agent, Téléconcept, a call centre in Morocco; Canadian law keeps responsibility with the Quebec client.
  • The original notice sought CAD 136,930. The Commission struck a CAD 4,430 add-on for unpaid do-not-call-list subscriptions and replaced CAD 1,250 per violation with CAD 1,000.

The person selling the furniture did not need to touch the phone. Esprit Habitat, a Quebec business, used calls made either by itself or by Téléconcept in Morocco to bring consumers to temporary shops with the promise of gifts. In its 27 October decision, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission counted 106 violations of unsolicited-telemarketing rules between September 2023 and September 2024. It received 45 complaints over that period. The decision does not allocate the 106 violations between the two callers.

The distance between the desks did not move the obligation. Section 72.16 of Canada's Telecommunications Act makes a client liable for a mandatary's violations. The company had not bought the National Do Not Call List subscription for the area codes its contractor called, had not ensured suppression of listed numbers and had not maintained a sufficient process for reports and its own do-not-call list. Those are operating failures at the customer-acquisition end of the chain, where the campaign was commissioned and its rewards landed.

The monetary calculation tells a second story. An October 2025 notice proposed CAD 1,250 for each of 106 violations, or CAD 132,500, then added CAD 4,430: twice the subscription fees the company had not paid. The CRTC rejected that extra charge. An administrative penalty goes to the Receiver General, not to the list operator as reimbursement. Avoided fees still matter to deterrence, but they do not become an independent invoice inside the fine. The Commission also found no case-specific basis to break from the CAD 1,000 rate used in comparable cases. That produced CAD 106,000.

Esprit Habitat did not pay the original notice or submit representations. The statute therefore treated the violations as committed. The CRTC still examined its proposed arithmetic, using the company's first-year net profit and the seriousness of the conduct to set a proportionate amount. It found the 45 complaints high, the nine violations per month low, and the prospect of further violations very high after staff warnings drew no effective response. A regulator that can correct its own penalty calculation makes the final order harder to dismiss as a bill built by momentum.

The money is due 26 November. The decision provides review and appeal routes; the public record cited here does not record a later payment or challenge.

Official source