If you’re a Canadian business thinking about text message marketing, you’re sitting on one of the highest-engagement channels available — open rates above 90%, response times measured in minutes, and a direct line to your customer’s pocket. But SMS in Canada comes with a real regulatory framework, and getting it wrong can be expensive.
This guide covers what Canadian businesses need to know about texting legally, how the rules compare to what you may have heard about U.S. regulations, and how OtterText is built from the ground up to keep your campaigns compliant and your messages delivered.
The Law You Need to Know: CASL
Canada’s primary regulation governing commercial text messages is CASL — Canada’s Anti-Spam Legislation — which came into effect in July 2014 and is enforced by the CRTC (Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission).
CASL applies to any commercial electronic message (CEM) sent to a Canadian phone number — even if your business is outside Canada. A CEM is any message that encourages participation in a commercial activity: promotions, offers, discount codes, sale announcements, product updates, and more.
Three things are required for every commercial SMS you send:
1. Consent
You must have permission before you text. CASL recognizes two types:
Express consent is the gold standard. The subscriber took a specific, affirmative action to opt in — they texted a keyword, checked an unchecked box on a form, or signed up explicitly for SMS communications. This consent has no expiry.
Implied consent is more limited. It applies when you have an existing business relationship — for example, a customer who purchased from you in the last two years, or a prospect who made an inquiry in the last six months. Once those windows close, implied consent expires and you need express consent to keep texting.
One important rule: consent for email does not transfer to SMS. If a subscriber opted into your newsletter, that does not give you permission to text them.
2. Sender Identification
Every message must clearly identify who is sending it. Include your business name and contact information — or a link to a page where that information is readily available. This information must remain valid for at least 60 days after the message is sent.
3. An Unsubscribe Mechanism
Subscribers must be able to opt out easily, at no cost to them. In Canada, recognized opt-out keywords include:
- English: STOP, END, QUIT, UNSUBSCRIBE
- French: ARRET, AIDE
When someone sends any of these, you must honor the request — not eventually, but promptly. Best practice is immediate; CASL allows a maximum of 10 days.
What About Quiet Hours?
CASL does not legislate specific quiet hours for SMS the way some U.S. state laws do, but the widely followed industry standard in Canada is 9am to 9pm in the recipient’s local time zone. Sending outside those hours increases complaint rates, which is the fastest path to carrier filtering and blocked numbers.
Penalties Are Real
The CRTC actively enforces CASL. Penalties can reach $1 million per violation for individuals and $10 million per violation for corporations. These aren’t hypothetical numbers — the CRTC fined Hudson’s Bay Company $120,000 in 2024 for sending promotional texts without proper consent documentation. An individual who sent over 111,000 unsolicited texts paid a $17,000 settlement and was ordered to stop.
Do You Need 10DLC Registration in Canada?
If you’ve done any research on U.S. SMS compliance, you’ve encountered 10DLC — the Application-to-Person (A2P) registration system that requires U.S. senders to register their brand and campaign with The Campaign Registry (TCR) before messages will be delivered.
Here’s the good news for Canadian businesses: 10DLC is a U.S. regulation. Canada does not have an equivalent mandatory registration system.
For Canada-to-Canada messaging, there is no TCR, no campaign approval process, and no waiting weeks for vetting. You follow CASL, maintain clean consent practices, and send.
The one exception: if your campaign sends to U.S. recipients, full A2P 10DLC brand and campaign registration is required regardless of where you’re sending from. Canadian businesses that text American customers are not exempt.
Carrier-Level Restrictions: The SHAFT Categories
Beyond CASL, Canadian carriers — Bell, Rogers, Telus, and others — enforce content restrictions very similar to the U.S. CTIA’s SHAFT framework. SHAFT stands for:
- S — Sex / Adult Content
- H — Hate Speech
- A — Alcohol
- F — Firearms
- T — Tobacco / Vaping
Messages in these categories face heightened carrier scrutiny, filtering, and in some cases outright blocking. Here’s how each category plays out in Canada:
Tobacco and Vaping
This is the most restricted category. Canada’s Tobacco and Vaping Products Act (TVPA) bans most forms of advertising and promotion for tobacco and vaping products at the federal level. Even with full CASL consent, sending promotional SMS for tobacco or cigars risks violating federal law. Transactional messages — order confirmations, shipping notifications, appointment reminders — carry less risk, but even those should be reviewed carefully. Legal counsel is strongly recommended before launching any tobacco-related SMS program in Canada.
Alcohol
Promotional SMS for alcohol is possible in Canada but requires strong safeguards. Age verification is mandatory — you need to collect and confirm that subscribers are 18+ (or 19+ depending on province) before sending alcohol-related promotions. With proper age-gating and compliant opt-in language, alcohol is one of the more workable regulated categories.
Firearms
Firearms messaging faces significant carrier scrutiny in Canada. Gun control laws create a more restrictive backdrop than in the U.S., and carriers are more likely to filter or block firearms-related promotional content. Transactional messaging (order updates, service reminders) is lower risk than promotional campaigns, but this category warrants careful handling.
Cannabis
Cannabis is legal in Canada but heavily regulated at both federal and provincial levels. Promotional SMS requires robust age-gating and compliance with both federal cannabis promotion rules and province-specific regulations, which vary meaningfully across the country.
Adult Content and Hate Speech
Blocked outright by Canadian carriers. No path to compliant delivery.
Short Codes vs. Long Codes in Canada
For high-volume or regulated-category messaging, short codes (5-6 digit numbers) offer the most reliable delivery in Canada. Short codes require vetting and approval through the Canadian Wireless Telecommunications Association (CWTA), which adds time and cost but provides cleaner carrier relationships and higher throughput limits.
Long codes (standard 10-digit numbers) work well for lower-volume campaigns and conversational messaging, but unregistered long-code A2P traffic is subject to aggressive carrier filtering by Bell, Rogers, and Telus. If you’re sending business-to-consumer messages at scale from a long code, deliverability will suffer without clean sending practices and a reputable platform behind the number.
How OtterText Is Built for This
OtterText wasn’t built for generic e-commerce blasts. It was built specifically for regulated industries — the ones that other platforms won’t touch or can’t get approved. That foundation maps directly to what Canadian businesses operating in restricted categories need.
Consent architecture that meets CASL standards. OtterText captures and logs express consent at the point of opt-in, including timestamp, method, and source. Implied consent windows are tracked automatically so you’re never texting on expired permission. Consent records are audit-ready.
Category-specific opt-in flows. Rather than bundling all consent into one generic checkbox, OtterText supports category-level consent capture — critical for regulated industries where mixing consent types creates compliance exposure.
Automatic opt-out processing. STOP, END, QUIT, UNSUBSCRIBE, ARRET, and AIDE are all recognized and processed immediately. Suppression lists are maintained and enforced across campaigns so an opt-out from one message applies platform-wide.
Sender identification built into message templates. Every outbound message includes the sender information required by CASL. No relying on senders to remember.
Quiet-hour enforcement. Campaigns are scheduled and delivered within compliant windows. Messages that would otherwise send outside the 9am-9pm standard are held and delivered at the next available time.
Age-gating tools for restricted categories. For alcohol, cannabis, and other age-restricted verticals, OtterText supports date-of-birth collection and verification workflows at the point of opt-in, before any restricted-category content is ever sent.
Full message and consent audit trail. Every message, every consent event, every opt-out is logged and retrievable. If the CRTC ever comes knocking, you have the documentation to defend your program.
SHAFT category flagging. Campaigns involving restricted content categories are identified and routed through appropriate compliance checks before messages go out.
The Bottom Line for Canadian Businesses
SMS marketing is legal, effective, and accessible in Canada. CASL is rigorous but navigable — the framework rewards businesses that treat consent seriously and penalizes those that don’t. If you’re in a regulated category, the bar is higher, but the channel is still available with the right platform behind you.
What you need is a platform built with compliance as a first principle, not bolted on as an afterthought.
That’s OtterText.
OtterText is a compliance-first SMS marketing platform built for regulated industries. To learn more or get started, visit ottertext.com.
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. SMS compliance in Canada — particularly for SHAFT-category industries — involves multiple regulatory bodies including the CRTC, Competition Bureau, Health Canada, and provincial regulators. Consult a Canadian attorney specializing in advertising law and telecommunications compliance before launching campaigns in restricted categories.
