Summary

  • The CRTC imposed C$106,000 on Esprit Habitat for 106 telemarketing violations; some calls were made by a call centre in Morocco acting for the Quebec company.
  • The regulator cut the proposed C$136,930 by removing a fee-recovery surcharge and lowering the amount per violation from C$1,250 to C$1,000.

A sales call can travel from Morocco to a Canadian living room. The liability travelled back. In its 27 October decision, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission held Quebec furniture seller Esprit Habitat responsible for 106 breaches of the Unsolicited Telecommunications Rules. Some of the calls came from Téléconcept, a Moroccan call centre working on its behalf. The Commission put the final administrative penalty at C$106,000.

The tempting headline was the original C$136,930 notice. It was wrong as a final number. That notice priced 106 violations at C$1,250 each, then added C$4,430—twice the C$2,215 in Do Not Call List subscription fees the company had avoided. Esprit Habitat neither paid the proposed amount nor made representations. Under the statute, the violations were therefore deemed committed. The Commission still had to decide what it could lawfully collect.

It removed the C$4,430. A compliance penalty goes to Canada's Receiver General; it is not an invoice for the operator of the National Do Not Call List. The avoided subscription cost remains relevant to deterrence, the CRTC said, but does not become a separate reimbursement line. It also lowered the rate to C$1,000 per violation. Comparable decisions used that rate, and the regulator found no case-specific reason to charge C$1,250. The arithmetic is two cuts, not one: C$4,430 off the surcharge and C$26,500 off the violation count, a total reduction of C$30,930.

The outsourcing issue cuts the other way. Section 72.16 of the Telecommunications Act makes a principal liable for an agent's violation within its authority. CRTC applied that rule to calls made for Esprit Habitat by Téléconcept. Where the caller sits does not change whom the Canadian rules bind when Canadian consumers receive the calls. The decision says some offending calls came through the Moroccan agent; it does not assign all 106 to that centre.

The rules themselves demand more than buying a list. The decision counts 46 calls to numbers on the National Do Not Call List without express consent, along with subscription, registration, internal suppression-list and client-oversight breaches. Its investigation recorded 45 complaints over the relevant twelve months. Those complaints are not a headcount of the 106 rule violations. The company used promised gifts to bring people to furniture pop-up shops, while the CRTC found it had not taken reasonable steps to keep its caller away from prohibited numbers.

The CRTC has set 26 November as the payment deadline. The public decision records neither payment nor a repaired calling process. Its sharper lesson is already visible: hiring the dialler does not hire away the legal duty, and a regulator cannot turn a fine into a collection bill merely because the unpaid fee is real.