CASL and PIPEDA for Home Care: Following Up With Families the Right Way
What Canada's anti-spam and privacy laws mean for calling, texting and emailing families who enquire about care.
Fast follow-up wins home care clients — but in Canada it has to be done with clear consent, honest identification and careful handling of health details. Build those in once and your team never has to think about them again.
1. Why this matters for home care
Families share sensitive details — a parent's diagnosis, mobility, finances — often in the first call. Mishandling that erodes trust, and CASL penalties can be significant. Getting it right is also a selling point: families notice when an agency is careful.
2. Getting and recording consent
- Add an unticked consent checkbox to web forms for ongoing texts and emails.
- On calls, ask: "Is it all right if we text you updates?" and note the answer.
- Store who consented, when, how and to what.
- Stop marketing messages as soon as someone opts out.
3. What every message needs
- Your agency's name and contact details.
- An easy way to unsubscribe (for texts, "Reply STOP").
- Content that matches what the family agreed to receive.
4. Handling health information
Collect only what you need to plan care, limit who can see it, and explain in your privacy policy how it's used. Check your province's health privacy law and have a plan for access requests and privacy breaches.
Consent built into every follow-up.
Willa records consent, honours opt-outs automatically and stores family data in Canada — so fast follow-up never comes at the cost of trust.
5. Frequently asked questions
What is CASL?
Canada's Anti-Spam Legislation governs commercial electronic messages — emails, texts and social messages. Senders generally need express or implied consent, must identify themselves, and must include a working unsubscribe that's honoured promptly.
What is PIPEDA?
The Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act is Canada's federal private-sector privacy law. It requires meaningful consent, collecting only what you need, safeguarding personal information and giving people access to it. Some provinces — Alberta, British Columbia and Québec — have their own similar laws, and health information may fall under provincial health privacy laws such as Ontario's PHIPA.
Is a family's web enquiry implied consent?
An enquiry generally lets you reply about that enquiry, and CASL provides limited-time implied consent after an enquiry. For longer-term marketing, ask for express consent and record it.
Where should family data be stored?
PIPEDA doesn't strictly require Canadian storage, but families and partners increasingly expect it, and some provincial and public-sector rules are stricter. Keeping data in a Canadian data centre is the simplest way to answer the question.