The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission made participation in its call-tracing process mandatory for all voice-service providers, rejecting a small-provider exemption that it said could leave a route for nuisance calls to evade investigation.
In its March 27, 2026 ruling, Compliance and Enforcement and Telecom Decision CRTC 2026-52, Mandatory call traceback participation for all providers of voice telecommunications services, the commission imposed a condition of service under sections 24 and 24.1 of the Telecommunications Act. It set June 25, 2026 as the effective date.
The obligation is triggered when a provider receives its first traceback request. Providers do not all have to complete onboarding in advance, and commission staff are to help new participants establish their response procedures.
Voluntary participation left investigative gaps
Call traceback follows a call through the providers that carried it to help identify its source. The commission introduced a voluntary process in 2021 to investigate calls that breached the Unsolicited Telecommunications Rules, including calls displaying altered caller-identification numbers.
The commission said tracing had improved its ability to investigate suspected violations. Making participation mandatory would prevent a provider from ignoring a request needed to identify the source.
During the consultation, several providers supported mandatory participation. Others argued that the voluntary system was sufficient or that compulsory participation would impose unnecessary work on providers with low call volumes. Smaller-provider burdens were also raised by the Public Interest Advocacy Centre.
The commission rejected an exemption based on provider type or size. Excluded providers could become a gap through which nuisance calls entered Canada, and investigators needed access to information regardless of which provider served the affected customer.
It found the workload manageable: responding involved finding a call record, completing a form and emailing it. Smaller networks generally received fewer requests. The benefits of timely information outweighed that burden.
Onboarding waits for the first request
The commission did not require thousands of providers to prepare simultaneously. It accepted that advance onboarding could make them establish procedures for requests they might never receive or would receive only much later.
Bell Canada had helped onboard new participants, but warned that the existing approach could not accommodate all providers at once. The commission chose onboarding after the first request, with staff assistance and administrative support for new participants.
The decision did not grant blanket immunity from penalties. Instead, it pointed to flexibility in response times and said penalties would be considered only after due process and repeated failures to respond appropriately. Providers acting in good faith need not be concerned about penalties, the reasons said.
Operational limits and technical exceptions
Providers must retain call data for at least 10 calendar days and respond to a traceback request within two business days, unless they give reasonable justification for being unable to meet that deadline.
The commission maintained limits of 10 requests a week for each provider and 40 for the industry. The provider limit applies separately to each legal entity, rather than to an entire corporate group.
A response must identify the upstream provider from which the call was received. But providers do not have to forward requests to foreign companies: the commission will handle necessary foreign requests itself, recognizing the limited prospect of timely foreign responses.
For calls authenticated through STIR/SHAKEN, a caller-identification authentication system for Internet Protocol-based calls, providers must include the signing provider's identity and the level of attestation where technically feasible. The decision exempts providers without IP-based voice services and those that do not perform that authentication themselves.
The commission decided against publishing individual traceback results at that time because of possible harm, including reputational concerns. It also declined to publish aggregate statistics, finding that the record had not identified which aggregated information would be useful.
Further work on automation
The decision asked the CRTC Interconnection Steering Committee to review onboarding and investigate automation, with findings requested by September 28. The committee's October 9 meeting agenda subsequently listed report NTRE086, on automating portions of call traceback processing, as submitted for approval.
That agenda establishes that follow-up work reached the committee; it does not establish adoption of particular automation measures. The March ruling itself imposed participation and response obligations, not a guarantee that spoofed calls would stop or that every provider had already been onboarded.
