Texting customers in Canada: what contractors need to know
CASL, consent, and why your texting platform asks you to register before it will send anything.
Last updated Aug 5, 2026
This is a plain-language overview, not legal advice. CASL penalties are significant enough that if you're running anything close to bulk messaging, it's worth an hour with a lawyer.
Texting customers is one of the highest-return things a contractor can do — appointment confirmations, "tech is 20 minutes out", review requests after the job. It's also the area where the rules in Canada differ most from the American advice you'll find online, and most of what ranks on this topic is written for a US audience.
CASL, in one paragraph
Canada's Anti-Spam Legislation covers commercial electronic messages, which includes texts, not just email. The core requirement is consent before you send. Consent comes in two forms: express, where someone actively agreed, and implied, which you get from an existing business relationship — for example someone who bought from you — and which expires. Every message also has to identify you and give a working way to unsubscribe.
What this means day to day
- Transactional messages to an active customer are the easy case. Confirming an appointment they booked is squarely within an existing business relationship.
- Marketing to old leads is the risky case. A quote you sent two years ago that went nowhere is where implied consent runs out. This is what gets contractors in trouble.
- Capture consent at the form, and keep the record. A checkbox on your booking form with clear wording, stored with a timestamp. The burden of proving consent is on you, not the customer.
- "Reply STOP" has to actually work. An unsubscribe route that isn't honoured promptly is its own violation, separate from the original message.
Why your platform makes you register first
Separately from the law, the mobile carriers have their own requirements. Application-to-person texting — anything sent by software rather than thumbs — has to be registered before carriers will reliably deliver it. In North America that's the A2P 10DLC process: you register your business and describe the campaign you're sending, and it's reviewed.
Two things to plan around. It costs a small monthly amount, and approval takes days, not minutes. Start it before you need it. Unregistered traffic gets filtered or blocked outright, which shows up as texts that appear to send from your side and never arrive on the customer's — the most annoying failure mode there is, because nothing looks broken.
A workable setup for a small shop
- Consent checkbox on the booking form, with plain wording, stored with the timestamp.
- Register for A2P before you launch anything, not the week you go live.
- Keep transactional and marketing messages separate, so a marketing opt-out doesn't kill appointment reminders.
- Honour every opt-out immediately and automatically. Never manually.
- Keep your records. If it's ever questioned, the records are the entire defence.
None of this is a reason to avoid texting. It's a reason to set it up properly once, at the start, rather than retrofitting it after a complaint.
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