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Canada's DNC list, highly promoted by the federal government and panned by almost everyone else, has a huge list of flaws. There are enough exceptions allowing marketers to call people on the list, that they might have used a hunk of Swiss Cheese. But the biggest problem isn't from the exceptions in the law governing the list.

No, the problem is that there's no protection from telemarketers and phone scam artists outside of Canada itself.

Recently, there has been a major rise in the number of telemarketing calls to Canadians, including those on the list. While some of these calls are due to the exceptions permitted marketers in the law governing the list, the vast majority of these calls originate in the United States, from places like California and Nevada. Because the federal government has no agreement with the US government regarding each country's respective Do Not Call list, these companies and scammers can buy our DNC list and start calling everyone on it.

Likewise, Canadian telemarketers and scammers can do the same thing to Americans. However, the government in the States is much more proactive about arresting and jailing people it doesn't like, even if their actions are perfectly legal outside the USA. Perhaps we'd do this too, if the telemarketers and scammers were interested in leaving the southwest United States.

It's very important that the Canadian and American governments either work on a reciprocal agreement that protects people in both countries from these negative effects of telemarketing, or scrap the ineffective lists altogether. It is unfair, and absolutely ridiculous, that the DNC lists only work as far as your nearest federal border.

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