Canadian CASL spam law questions

Yes you can email them for two years *from the date they signed up* so you'll only be able to email someone who signed up in November 2012 until November 2014 (as an example... so it gets a bit awkward here as people will drop every month unless you get their actual consent)

You will need to add a checkbox to your sign-up form, unchecked until the user checks it. You can email them about account issues, but cannot try to sell them anything in that correspondence if they haven't signed up to receive marketing emails.

It depends, if you have an aweber form baked into your subscribe/sign up page then they'll deal with all this and know the law as they are the ones who will be responsible if it goes wrong. If you're uploading CSV's or email addresses to aweber or other auto-responders after-the-signup it will be you who's responsible.

The proof would essentially be a checkbox on your sign up form. You'll then have a corresponding database table with 1 or 0. If you get audited/investigated at any time you would have to show how that gets set (basically from them checking or leaving unchecked the box) and show that your email/marketing script uses it.

You probably won't get audited or investigated without multiple users complaining that they left the box unchecked yet they're getting marketing anyway. So basically do it right, and you won't need to prove anything.

From what I've read on the official FAQ government site

Found Here

It looks no different than the US CAN-Spam laws.

Double opt-in will work as proof. I would collect IP, Date of sign up, Date of Confirmation & Email address/name.

Make sure you have one click unsubscribe for both email and SMS.

Include YOUR mailing address in any mailings.

The answers always refer to implied consent being written or oral.

But the proof is up to you.

I would include that check box with a link to a terms of use / privacy policy / email policy.

Also make it very clear on the sign up form that you intend to send commercial electronic mailings that are within the scope of the list or service that subscribers are signing up for.

Sounds like a bit of work but a one time set up for each form that will cover your butt!

As it states several times on the government site responsibility of proof of consent falls on you the list owner and "Compliance will be examined on a case-by-case basis in light of the specific circumstances of a given situation."

May be a bit vague but what do you expect from government. Lawyers have to make their money "interpreting" law.