The OP wasn't talking about email spammers.

Email spammers don't call you.

he was actually talking about telemarketers.

I should have said scammer in the title. Spammers are bad, too, but wouldn't advocate quite the same "punishment" for them.

And to be real, have to remember where many of these scammers are calling from, they don't hesitate to kidnap and kill people for money.

Canada only very recently started to enforce this list.
It was a joke up until 2015.

Now it has some teeth.

If the people calling you were kidnapping and killing for money, they wouldn;t waste their time taking abuse from random people over the phone...lol

Also, you might find if you followed the news for a while, that Canadians (and all people really) are more than capable of also kidnapping and killing for money.

This is not country specific behavior.

No, talking about the calls that have been happening lately where a caller explains their (usually from Microsoft) and your computer is in need of repair. They tehn walk you through several steps to acquire your IP and hopefully login info in an attempt to gain access to your system, probably not to fix any computer issues :)

And what's really disturbing is how many elder people (who often do struggle with their computers) get sucked in by these scumbags. Have even heard they hold some people (eg. silly teenagers) at ransom (with their intimate pics), and other extortions.

I find the best solution is to not have a house phone. Frankly, I don't even answer my cell if I don't know the number. Haven't had any problems in several years.

I get way more spam calls on my work cell phone than my home phone. I've never had any problems though, I just hang up.