Last reviewed: 17 September 2026

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That "your extended warranty is expiring" email or text: what CASL actually requires

Our robocall and telemarketing page covers the unsolicited call and explains why Canada's Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL) doesn't reach a voice call at all. This page covers the version of the same pitch that actually is CASL's territory: an email or text warning your warranty is about to expire.

The default rule: consent first, plus required content, every time

CASL (S.C. 2010, c. 23) requires express consent before sending a "commercial electronic message" — an email, text, or similar message where a purpose is to encourage participation in a commercial activity, which an extended-warranty pitch plainly is. Consent alone isn't the whole requirement: the message itself has to identify who actually sent it (and, if different, who it was sent on behalf of), give working contact information valid for at least 60 days, and include a working unsubscribe mechanism, at no cost to the recipient, that stays functional for at least 60 days after the message goes out. Once you unsubscribe, the sender has to honour that request without delay, and no later than 10 business days afterward — not "eventually," and not only after your next renewal cycle.

The loophole a warranty marketer actually relies on: the "existing business relationship"

CASL doesn't require express consent in every case — section 10 lets a sender rely on implied consent instead where an "existing business relationship" already exists: broadly, a purchase, lease, or contract with the recipient within the prior two years, or an inquiry from the recipient within the prior six months. In practice, this is exactly what lets the dealership or manufacturer that actually sold you the vehicle keep emailing or texting you about a renewal or an add-on warranty for up to two years after that sale without asking you to opt in first. The same exemption doesn't extend to an unrelated third-party warranty marketer with no purchase or inquiry relationship to you at all — the same "similar product, real relationship" limitation our robocall page describes for the National DNCL's business-relationship exemption, just under a different statute here.

A separate, narrower exemption for a genuine warranty-status message

CASL's own consent-exemption list — paragraph 6(6)(c) — covers a message that solely provides warranty, product recall, safety, or security information about something the recipient already uses or has purchased — a real coverage-status update, not a pitch to buy something new. An exempt message still has to meet the identification and unsubscribe requirements above; it just doesn't need consent first. The word doing the real work here is "solely," and the CRTC itself hasn't fully resolved how far it stretches: a message that mixes a genuine warranty-status update with a renewal sales pitch is the harder case, and a sender shouldn't assume adding one sentence of warranty information turns an otherwise-promotional message into an exempt one.

Penalties, and where enforcement actually happens

CASL section 20 sets the maximum administrative monetary penalty per violation at $1 million for an individual and $10 million for an organization, enforced by the CRTC. Separately, CASL's own amendments to the Competition Act let the Competition Bureau go after false or misleading sender information, subject lines, or message content — independent of whether consent existed at all, the same federal backstop our Competition Act page covers for other misleading warranty marketing. CASL also created a private right of action letting an affected person sue directly, but the federal government suspended that provision indefinitely by Order in Council in June 2017, before its scheduled July 1, 2017 start date, and it has not been brought into force since. A consumer's realistic recourse today is a complaint to the CRTC, not a personal lawsuit under the Act itself.