The short answer: yes. A British Columbia business can record calls with its own customers, and doing so is not a crime. But the rule people quote, Canada's "one-party consent", comes from the Criminal Code and only decides whether recording is a criminal offence. The rule that binds a business is BC's Personal Information Protection Act (PIPA): on or before collecting a caller's personal information, you must tell them the purpose. In practice, that means a short message at the start of every call saying it is recorded and why. An AI receptionist's transcript and summary need the same message, because they are records of the same conversation.
The question usually comes up when a business switches on something new: call recording in a VoIP system, call tracking for ads, or an AI receptionist that answers, transcribes and summarises every call.
"Recording" in this post means any lasting record of what a caller said. That includes the audio file, the written transcript, and the AI-generated summary emailed to you afterwards.
This is not legal advice. It is a plain-English map of the rules that apply to an ordinary BC service business. For anything unusual, such as health information, voice authentication or calls into Quebec, ask a privacy lawyer.
Is Canada a one-party consent country?
For criminal law, yes. Section 184 of the Criminal Code makes it an offence, punishable by up to five years in prison, to knowingly intercept a private communication. Section 184(2)(a) exempts anyone who has the consent of one of the parties to that communication. If you are on the call, your own consent is enough, so recording it is not a crime.
That is where most articles stop. It is also why most of them give a business the wrong answer.
The Criminal Code answers one question: can you be prosecuted for intercepting the call? A business has a second question to answer: is it handling a customer's personal information lawfully? That is a privacy-law question, and one-party consent does not answer it.
Which privacy law applies to a BC business?
For a provincially regulated BC business, BC's Personal Information Protection Act, not the federal PIPEDA. That covers trades, clinics, restaurants, shops and professional firms.
BC's law was declared substantially similar to PIPEDA. As the Information and Privacy Commissioner for BC explained in a 2013 speech, the federal law therefore does not apply to provincially regulated businesses. PIPEDA still covers federally regulated businesses, such as banks, airlines and telecoms, and personal information that crosses provincial or national borders in the course of commercial activity.
That distinction matters because most call-recording guidance online cites PIPEDA. The federal guidance is still worth reading. The Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada (OPC) says its guidelines are best practices for organisations not subject to PIPEDA. They also line up closely with what PIPA requires.
| Rule | What it decides | What it requires of a business recording its own calls |
|---|---|---|
| Criminal Code s. 184 | Whether recording is a crime | Nothing extra. A party to the call may record it |
| BC PIPA | Whether you handle the caller's information lawfully | Tell the caller the purpose on or before collection. Collect only for reasonable purposes. Secure it, give access on request, and keep or destroy it by the rules |
| BC Privacy Act | Whether a person can sue you for violating their privacy | Don't wilfully record or use recordings in a way that violates someone's reasonable privacy |
| OPC guidance (PIPEDA) | Federally regulated businesses and cross-border data; best practice for everyone else | Announce the recording, state a narrow purpose, offer alternatives where recording isn't integral |
What does BC PIPA actually require when you record calls?
Five sections do most of the work.
- Section 10(1): tell them why, first. On or before collecting personal information from someone, an organisation must disclose the purposes, verbally or in writing. On request, it must also give the name or title of someone who can answer questions about it.
- Section 7: consent depends on that notice. Under PIPA, a person has not consented unless the section 10 information was provided. Consent obtained with false or misleading information about how the information will be used is not valid.
- Section 11: reasonable purposes only. You may collect personal information only for purposes a reasonable person would consider appropriate in the circumstances.
- Section 34: protect it. Recordings need reasonable security arrangements against unauthorised access, copying or disposal.
- Section 35: keep it, then destroy it. If you use a recording to make a decision that directly affects the customer, such as resolving a billing dispute, you must keep it for at least one year. Otherwise, destroy it once it no longer serves its purpose or a legal or business need.
Section 23 also gives callers a right to ask for their own personal information, and a recording of their own call is no exception.
Section 8(1) deems consent where the purpose would be obvious to a reasonable person and the person volunteers the information. Don't rely on it for recording. A caller ringing to book a furnace service volunteers their address for the booking. Whether a recording of their voice, kept for months, was obvious to them is much harder to argue than a five-second announcement is to play.
What changed on 8 October 2026?
The federal Privacy Commissioner updated its guidance on recording customer calls. The 8 October 2026 release says the key updates concern voiceprints, the uniquely identifying characteristics of a voice. The OPC treats them as sensitive biometric information, and the update sets out when meaningful consent may be required.
The updated guidance says, among other things:
- A business must inform the customer that the call is being recorded, state the purpose clearly and obtain consent.
- The purpose should be as narrow as possible, and the customer should be told every purpose the recording may serve.
- A business should not say a call is recorded for security or quality assurance if the recording will be used for marketing, customer profiling or authentication.
- Consent is usually implied if the caller continues knowing the call is recorded and why. If the recording involves voiceprints or other sensitive personal information, express consent may be required.
- If recording is not integral to the service, customers must be offered an alternative, such as continuing the call unrecorded, emailing or completing the transaction online.
- Recordings can capture more than the conversation: voice characteristics such as tone, speech characteristics such as an accent or a speech disability, and incidental details that are irrelevant to the call.
That last point is the one AI tools make sharper. A human listening back to a call hears an accent. A transcription and analysis system can store it, tag it and search across thousands of calls. Anything a vendor does with your callers' voices beyond answering and summarising the call is a purpose you have to name.
Does an AI receptionist count as recording?
Yes. An AI receptionist answers the call and produces a record of it. Often that is an audio file plus a transcript and a summary that lands in your inbox or CRM. All three are records of what an identifiable person said, which makes them personal information under PIPA.
Three things are specific to AI receptionists:
- The vendor holds the data, you hold the responsibility. PIPA section 4(2) makes an organisation responsible for personal information under its control, including information it doesn't hold itself. A recording on your vendor's servers is still yours to answer for.
- "Quality assurance" may not cover it. If the vendor uses your call recordings to train or improve its models, that is a purpose beyond answering your customer. Check the contract. If it does, either opt out or say so in the announcement.
- Disclosing AI and disclosing recording are separate questions. No Canadian law in force requires you to say the caller is talking to AI. There are good reasons to say it anyway, covered in whether you have to tell callers it is AI. Recording is different: PIPA requires the notice. One sentence can do both.
How to set up call recording properly
- List every purpose. Write down every use of the recordings: dispute resolution, training staff, checking AI summaries, marketing, voice authentication. If marketing or voice authentication is on the list, it goes in the announcement or comes off the list.
- Put the notice at the very start. Play it before the caller gives a name, an address or the problem. PIPA says "on or before collecting", and a notice after the caller has described their leaking roof is after.
- Name the purpose in one sentence. For example: "This call is recorded and transcribed so we can get your booking right and check our service." For an AI line: "You've reached our automated assistant. This call is recorded and transcribed so we can get your details to the team."
- Give callers another way. "If you'd rather not be recorded, email us at…" or "press 0 to leave a message for a call back." The OPC expects an alternative where recording isn't integral to the service.
- Check the vendor settings. Find out where recordings are stored, who can access them, how long they are kept, whether they train models, and how you delete one when a customer asks.
- Set a retention period and write it down. Match it to the purpose. A recording kept only to check an AI summary needs far less time than one kept for disputes. Anything used to decide something about a customer, such as a refund or a disputed quote, must be kept at least one year under PIPA section 35. Then delete on schedule.
- Add a line to your privacy policy. Say what you record, why, how long you keep it and who to ask. That gives the PIPA section 10(1)(b) contact a home.
What about callers from Washington State?
A business in the Okanagan, Kootenays or Fraser Valley takes calls from across the border. Washington's law, RCW 9.73.030, is an all-party consent rule for telephone recording, and it covers communications "between points within or without the state". It treats consent as obtained when one party announces the recording in a reasonably effective manner, and the announcement itself is recorded.
Whether that statute reaches a BC business is a question for a lawyer, not this post. The practical point is simpler: an announcement at the start of every recorded call meets BC's notice rule and Washington's announcement rule at the same time. The same announcement works on both sides of the border.
Does anyone actually enforce this?
BC's Information and Privacy Commissioner can investigate on its own initiative, and has done so for audio recording. In Investigation Report P17-01 (8 November 2017), the Acting Commissioner looked into a BC chicken-catching company's body-worn video and audio surveillance after media reports. He found that the company was collecting personal information through those recordings and was not authorised by PIPA to do so. He recommended that it stop and delete the stored recordings.
That case was about employees, not customer calls, but the principle carries: under PIPA, an audio recording of a person is a collection of their personal information. PIPA's offence provisions also carry fines of up to $100,000 for an organisation that, for example, uses deception to collect personal information. Separately, BC's Privacy Act lets a person sue, without proving damage, over a wilful violation of their privacy, including by eavesdropping.
The realistic risk for a small business is not a six-figure fine. It is a complaint and an investigation that costs you time. Or a customer who finds out months later that their call was kept and used for something nobody mentioned.
Common questions
Can I record a phone call without telling the other person in BC?
As an individual on the call, recording it is not a crime under the Criminal Code's one-party consent rule. A business recording customer calls is in a different position. BC's Personal Information Protection Act requires it to tell the caller the purpose on or before collecting their information, so the business should announce the recording.
Do I need a "this call may be recorded" message?
If your business records calls, yes. The message is how you meet BC PIPA's requirement to disclose the purpose on or before collection. Name the actual purpose rather than a generic line, play it before the caller gives personal details, and give them another option if they'd rather not be recorded.
Does PIPEDA apply to my Kamloops business?
Usually not for in-province activity. BC's Personal Information Protection Act was declared substantially similar to PIPEDA, so it governs provincially regulated BC businesses. PIPEDA still applies to federally regulated businesses such as banks and telecoms, and to personal information crossing provincial or national borders in commercial activity.
Are AI call transcripts and summaries covered too?
Yes. A transcript or summary of what an identifiable caller said is personal information under BC PIPA, just like the audio. The same notice covers all three. Under PIPA section 4(2) you remain responsible for them even when they sit on your vendor's servers rather than your own.
How long can I keep call recordings in BC?
No fixed maximum. BC PIPA section 35 says to destroy them once they no longer serve the purpose or a legal or business need. If a recording was used to make a decision directly affecting the customer, such as resolving a disputed bill, you must keep it at least one year.
What changed in the federal call-recording guidance in October 2026?
On 8 October 2026 the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada updated its guidance. It treats voiceprints as sensitive biometric information, says express consent may be required for them, and warns against citing quality assurance for recordings actually used for marketing, profiling or authentication.
The honest summary
Recording customer calls in BC is legal and often useful, especially when an AI receptionist turns every call into a summary you can act on. The legal bar is low. What trips businesses up is quoting the wrong rule.
Put one sentence at the start of the call that says it is recorded and why. Give people another way to reach you. Know where your vendor keeps the recordings and for how long. Delete them on a schedule. That covers BC PIPA, matches the OPC's updated guidance, and handles Washington callers as well.
Setting up an AI receptionist? The call flow, the announcement and the retention settings are part of every AI receptionist setup in Kamloops, done properly from day one. Start with what an AI receptionist costs, and see what BC privacy law means for the AI tools you use. If your follow-up runs by text message, the consent rules for texting customers are a separate regime.
Sources: OPC, Recording of customer telephone calls (modified 8 October 2026) · OPC news release, 8 October 2026 · BC Personal Information Protection Act · Criminal Code, section 184 · OIPC BC Investigation Report P17-01
Written by Jagatjeet, a web architect and digital marketer based in Kamloops, BC. Jagatjeet (jagatjeet.com) builds websites, local SEO and AI automation, including AI receptionists, for businesses across the BC Interior. Published 16 October 2026. Statutes checked against their current consolidations on 16 October 2026. This is general information, not legal advice.