After much anticipation, the Do Not Call List will kick in across Canada in less than a week — and businesses need to prepare for the impact that it’s going to have, said Bell Canada product manager Valerie Nippard on Wednesday at the Investment Funds Institute of Canada’s annual conference.

“It is going to change the way telemarketing business activities are done in Canada,” said Nippard about the the incoming legislation and the ways it will affect businesses and consumers alike.

Beginning Sept. 30, Canadians can register their telephone numbers on a national list that prohibits telemarketers from calling for the purpose of solicitation, with the exception of registered charities, general circulation newspapers and certain other types of telemarketers.

Businesses will have 31 days to comply with the new legislation, after which failures to comply could result in fines as steep as $15,000 per offending call.

Violations of similar legislation in the U.S. has resulted in fines of more than US$750,000 for such large companies as Dynasty Mortgage and AT&T, Nippard said.

“These are large corporations that thought they had a solution in place to ensure compliance,” she said.

A violation of the incoming legislation will also give the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission the right to make the offence known to the public, Nippard said.

“You, as a business professional, cannot afford to be hit either in the wallet, nor can you afford to take a hit to your brand image,” said Nippard. “This is significant for businesses.”

Even without violations of the new legislation, businesses engaged in telemarketing will face new costs connected to it.

Any company engaged in telemarketing activities must subscribe to the Do Not Call List at a price of $615 per area code annually. A subscription to the country-wide list will cost more than $11,000 per year, which are “significant costs to businesses that are in the telemarketing space,” Nippard said.

Businesses will also likely need to pour additional resources into compliance of the new legislation in areas such as staff training and stringent record-keeping procedures.

To avoid potential violations and to ensure adequate compliance, Nippard encouraged businesses to begin making adjustments immediately.

“You must rapidly modify your policies and practices,” she said. “It’s going to take your sales organization a while to become comfortable with this new legislation.”

In estimating the impact that the new regulation could have, the similar U.S. legislation offers a guideline of what businesses can expect.

Within the first four days that the U.S. legislation was implemented, 10 million phone numbers had been registered on the list, Nippard said. Within 40 days, 30 million numbers were registered.

Based on the U.S. experience, Nippard expects three million telephone numbers in Canada to be registered within the first 30 days.

“With a population of approximately 32 million, that’s a significant percent for us,” she said.