Making more than 60 calls over the past 18 months to people on the national do not call list has cost a Calgary-based telemarketer a record $500,000.

Xentel DM Inc., with offices in the city' northeast, was found by the Canadian Radio-Television Telecommunications Commission to have violated its unsolicited telecommunications rules after investigating dozens of complaints.

"The size of the fine is impressive and should be a deterrent to other groups," said Bruce Cran, president of the Consumers Association of Canada. "It remains to be seen whether this is looked at as the cost of doing business.

"They probably do view it as the cost of doing business. This is, after all, a generator of unwanted phone calls."

Before Friday, the total of all other do not call fines levied since the fall of 2008 totalled $75,000.

Andrea Rosen, the CRTC's chief telecommunications enforcement office, said the hefty penalty was necessary because Xentel is one of the largest telemarketing firms in the country.

"They make many, many calls," she said. "We are concerned when a large telemarketer that should know the difference between right and wrong is found to be abusing the rules.

"Secondly, we were concerned that the calls were being made giving the impression that they were charitable organizations when they could not claim the exemption."

A spokesman for Xentel, which is American-owned, said they couldn't comment outside the statement released by the CRTC.

Rosen said the calls were made across the country.

Twenty-six were made between June 2009 and November 2009, on behalf of not-for profit organizations that weren't registered as charities. That led to 26 violations of the unsolicited telecommunications rules for calling people on the do not call list, as well as 13 violations because one not-for-profit wasn't a registered subscriber of the list and hadn't paid applicable fees.

Calls for charities registered with the Canada Revenue Agency are exempt.

Between December 2009 and October 2010, 36 calls were made by Xentel on its own behalf to people on the do not call list.

"Our main objective is to ensure the compliance of telemarketers with these rules," Rosen said. "We need to get that message out to telemarketers. We need to have them understand the rules. Understand how to comply with the rules and ensure that they understand what an effective compliance program is and to put it into place. And in addition to know there are going to be consequences if they don't."

Cran said he hopes the penalty "has the effect it's supposed to."

The do not call list came into effect in the fall of 2008 and more than eight million phone or fax numbers were on the list as of this summer.

In July, the CRTC reported that more than 300,000 complaints had been lodged, with 22 companies fined a total of about $75,000. Only about $3,000 of that had been collected.

Xentel has already paid its $500,000 penalty, the CRTC said.

Cran said the list has been breached since it started.

"Consumers have very little faith in it," he said.

Along with registered charities, a number of other groups are also allowed exemptions, including businesses allowed to call former customers for 18 months after the relationship ends to try to win them back or to try to sell existing customers new products or services. Survey companies, political parties and newspapers are also exempt.

A company that offers "integrated benefit event planning, marketing and production services," Xentel has agreed to publish corrective notices in two national newspapers and on its website and will "implement a compliance program to ensure its telemarketing practices adhere to the rules and verify its representatives are properly trained," the CRTC said.

kguttormson@calgaryherald.com