The exemption everyone relies on removes one requirement out of several. Read which one, before you build a sequence on the assumption it removes them all.
Key takeaways
Build the sequence so that consent is not the thing you are relying on, and keep every message factual. Section 6 of Canada’s anti-spam legislation prohibits sending a commercial electronic message unless the recipient has consented and the message complies with subsection 6(2). Subsection 6(6) then disapplies the consent requirement — paragraph (1)(a) only — for several categories, two of which fit a payment plan: a message that solely facilitates, completes or confirms a commercial transaction the recipient previously agreed to enter into, and a message that solely provides notification of factual information about an ongoing subscription, membership, account, loan or similar relationship.
That is the sentence to read twice. The exemption is from consent. Everything in subsection 6(2) survives, on every message.
The unsubscribe requirement is the one firms argue about, on the reasonable-sounding ground that a debtor should not be able to unsubscribe from being asked for money. The Act does not carve that out of subsection 6(2), so the safe build includes it and the escalation ladder simply moves to a channel the Act does not govern — a letter, or a telephone call made by a person. Treadstone Law on unsubscribe requirements covers the mechanism, its article on implied versus express consent the consent landscape, the B2B exemption the business-to-business position, and its note on CASL penalties and CRTC complaints what enforcement looks like.
One more design consequence: the exemptions turn on the message doing something solely. A reminder that also promotes your new advisory service is not a factual notification about an account any more, and the whole message loses the exemption. Keep the payment sequence clean and market somewhere else. The CRTC administers the Act on the electronic-message side.
Section 6 stops applying, and a different rulebook starts. Subsection 6(8) provides that section 6 does not apply to a commercial electronic message that is, in whole or in part, an interactive two-way voice communication between individuals, that is sent by facsimile to a telephone account, or that is a voice recording sent to a telephone account. Firms sometimes read that as freedom. It is not.
The CRTC’s Unsolicited Telecommunications Rules define an Automatic Dialing-Announcing Device as any automatic equipment incorporating the capability of storing or producing telecommunications numbers, used alone or with other equipment, to convey a pre-recorded or synthesized voice message to a telecommunications number. An AI voice agent that rings a client and speaks a reminder is squarely inside that definition.
Part IV of those Rules sets conditions for a person using an ADAD to make unsolicited telecommunications where there is no attempt to solicit. They include: no calls to emergency lines or healthcare facilities; calls restricted to 9:00 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. on weekdays and 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. at weekends, in the hours of the person receiving the call; a message beginning with a clear identification of the person on whose behalf it is made and a brief description of its purpose, including an email or postal address and a local or toll-free number where a representative can be reached, repeated at the end if the message runs beyond sixty seconds; display of the originating number or an alternate reachable number; no sequential dialling; equipment that disconnects within ten seconds of the recipient hanging up; and contact details valid for a minimum of sixty days.
Where the call is an attempt to solicit, Part IV requires express consent for an ADAD call, and Part V sets out what counts as express consent. That distinction is worth getting advice on before you point a voice agent at a debtor list.
Two drafting points that decide whether the sequence is worth running. First, if the plan carries interest, section 4 of the Interest Act provides that where a written or printed contract makes interest payable at a rate for a period of less than a year, no interest above five per cent per annum is chargeable, payable or recoverable unless the contract expressly states the equivalent yearly rate — outside mortgages on real property and hypothecs on immovables. Treadstone Law on late-payment interest clauses covers the drafting.
Second, if you are a law firm, Rule 3.6-1.1 of the Law Society of Ontario’s Rules of Professional Conduct provides that a lawyer shall not charge a client interest on an overdue account save as permitted by the Solicitors Act or otherwise permitted by law. And whoever you are, chasing your own account is not the same activity as operating a collection agency; Treadstone Law’s answer sets out what an agency may do in Ontario, and the rules that bind an agency are not the rules that bind you.
A Manitoba accounting practice puts eleven clients on six-month plans after a difficult season. The sequence is six messages: a confirmation on signature, then five instalment reminders three days before each due date, each stating the instalment amount, the date, the remaining balance and nothing else. Each carries the firm’s identification, a reachable contact and an unsubscribe link, because the exemption relied on removes consent and not form.
Missed instalments do not escalate automatically. They raise a task for the partner who agreed the plan, who telephones. The reason for that design is not caution for its own sake: an automated escalation on a plan is the fastest way to convert a client who is paying slowly into a client who has stopped.
The countable measures are the proportion of instalments paid on or before the due date, and the number of plans that ran to completion without a renegotiation. Both existed before the change, in the sense that neither was recorded.
Do we really need an unsubscribe link on a payment reminder?
The consent exemption in subsection 6(6) does not remove subsection 6(2), which includes the unsubscribe requirement. Build it in and keep the escalation on a channel the Act does not govern.
Can the AI agent negotiate a new plan on the call?
No. Varying the terms on which a debt is repaid is a decision with legal consequences, and it belongs to a person who can bind the firm.
Is a text message treated differently from email?
Both are electronic messages sent to an electronic address under the Act, so treat them the same way and apply the same identification and unsubscribe design.
A 30-minute call is enough to tell you whether AI pays for itself here.
