Recording calls in Canada: what the law asks, and what we keep

A recorded call is the most useful record a trade business has of what was promised to whom. It is also personal information about the caller, which means there are rules. In Canada the rules come from two places, and they ask different things.

The Criminal Code

Section 184 of the Criminal Code makes it an offence to knowingly intercept a private communication. The exception that matters for a business is section 184(2)(a): the prohibition does not apply to a person who has the consent, express or implied, of the originator of the communication or of the person it was intended for. That is the one party consent rule. If your business is a party to the call, recording it is not interception.

Privacy law asks for more

Not being a crime is a low bar. The Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act, PIPEDA, applies to a recording as personal information, and the Office of the Privacy Commissioner has published guidance on recording customer calls. The steps are specific. The organisation must inform the customer that the call is being recorded, clearly state the purpose, and ask for consent. If the customer keeps talking after being told, consent is implied. If they object, the business has to offer another way to do the same thing.

The guidance goes further on what happens next. A business should not say a recording is for quality assurance if it will be used for something else. Recordings need appropriate safeguards and a retention limit. And the customer has a right to ask for the recording later.

What that looks like on a call

• The recording notice is the first thing the caller hears, with the reason: so the business has a record of the job.
• The consent is stored with the recording, not in a separate log that can drift.
• Recordings are kept for a set period and then deleted, and the period is written down.
• A customer who asks for their recording gets it.

This is how Eva handles every call: the notice up front, the consent attached to the recording, the transcript and summary generated from it, and the whole thing available to the business and, on request, to the caller. The Privacy Commissioner's guidance was last updated in March 2018, and the practice above meets it as written.

Quebec businesses should also read Law 25, which added its own obligations on top of the federal rules. If you operate there, check that the notice and retention practice matches it.