During its first week almost 2.7 million Canadians have registered on a list of people who no longer want to receive calls from telemarketers. The do-not-call list, run by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, was launched at midnight on Sept. 30 and garnered 200,000 numbers in the first nine hours.

The online and telephone registration services quickly became overwhelmed. The systems crashed for several hours after 80,000 people tried to register at once.

The CRTC has projected that of Canada’s 27 million residential phone lines, which include cellphone numbers, 16 million will be on the do-not-call list within two years.

Although it has already received some complaints from people registered on the list who are still receiving calls from telemarketers, it’s too early for the telecommunications regulator to respond.
Once your number is on the list, most telemarketers can no longer call you after 31 days. Telemarketers that breach the list could be fined up to $15,000. People reporting a complaint will be asked to provide the date of the call and the name or phone number of the telemarketer.

There are some exceptions, such as pollsters, researchers, charities, government agencies and companies that already have a relationship with the household.

However, people who do not want to be called even by companies they currently deal with, like cable, phone companies and banks, can ask to be put on those firms’ internal do-not-call list.

People can register their phone numbers online at www.LNNTE-DNCL.gc.ca or by calling the toll-free number 1-866-580-3625.

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