“B.C. is actively examining what role broadcast intrusive alerting systems could play in notifying the public of other events beyond tsunamis,” EMBC spokesman Jordan Turner said. He added that police in the province can use the system to alert the public about active shooters. No such alerts have been issued yet.
After years of failure by federal and provincial safety ministries to agree on a national alerting system, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission in 2009 ordered telecom companies to create a common alerting channel that could be used across the country.
But the CRTC could not direct how the system is used because emergency management is a provincial responsibility. The federal government has passed no laws shaping the system, pays no money into it and does not oversee operations. Provincial emergency-management organizations (EMOs) run their systems as they see fit.
The consequences of a lack of clear and uniform guidelines became clear in Nova Scotia last year, when authorities unfamiliar with the system struggled to craft an Alert Ready message about a gunman in a fake RCMP uniform and driving a replica cruiser. Communications between the provincial EMO and the local RCMP broke down. Police instead issued warnings on Twitter. Twenty-two people were killed in 13 hours during Canada’s deadliest mass shooting.
The 25 forest fire warnings issued in Alberta since 2019 account for the vast majority of the 30 forest-fire warnings issued across Canada in that span. (The AlertReady website only records statistics back to Jan. 1, 2019.)
Records show most of Alberta’s 25 wildfire alerts were issued on behalf of counties, towns and First Nations. Emergency officials in the province say they take pride in helping smaller communities warn their citizens about danger.
“Public safety always trumps everything else,” said Tim Trytten, who recently retired as the Alberta government’s team leader on alerting. He added that Alberta also has other alert systems and they reinforce each other.
“Minutes matter,” he said. “If you can give people a heads up to have a truck full of gas, and they have their pills, their passports and their photos ready to go – then you can be ready to move.”
The B.C. government says its role in alerting often amounts more to rebroadcasting on its websites what communities put out about natural disasters.
“Local authorities in B.C. have the responsibility to provide emergency notifications to their residents for all hazards,” EMBC’s Mr. Turner said. He added that “the province amplifies all evacuation orders and alerts issued by local communities.”
But some municipal managers say their lack of access to Alert Ready has forced a patchwork system.
Daniel Stevens, Vancouver’s director of emergency management, said B.C. cities and towns are buying their own alerting systems and software, but the capabilities are limited: People must sign up to get the phone alerts, and such systems leave out people who are not residents of the area, such as commuters, truckers and tourists.
“People will need to download an app or subscribe in some form,” Mr. Stevens said. “We can’t have the mandatory push that goes and interrupts TV and radio and sends messages to cellphones. That’s wholly controlled, 100 per cent, by the province of B.C.”
Also concerning, he said, is people may incorrectly believe their cellphones will alert them about emergencies in B.C. The province has used Alert Ready “for annual tests, which is giving the public the impression that this is an operational system.”
“I don’t consider it operational beyond for tsunami alerts – which is what they have have continuously said they’re using the system for at this point. But I do not believe that is well understood in the public,” Mr. Stevens said.
Records show B.C. officials once hoped to issue a broad array of warnings.
Years ago, when the CRTC asked organizations across Canada whether there was a need to build systems facilitating direct-to-cellphone alerting, EMBC and other provincial departments said such capabilities would be sorely needed for all manner of calamities.
“The province would see issuing a wide-area intrusive alert for events such as tsunamis, earthquakes, wildfires, flooding, or major hazardous material events,” reads the B.C. government’s CRTC submission in 2016.
The document added that the long-term plan was to “allow key stakeholders to access the alerting system in their jurisdiction.”
