Cellphone alert setup overdue for Canada

Emergencies come in all shapes and sizes: unpredictable weather, gas leaks, chemical spills, terror attacks and child abductions.

You’re either prepared for emergencies or you’re not. We are not — at least, not as well as we could be. Canadians currently receive emergency warnings through every major medium except cellphones.

Cellphone alerts have become increasingly necessary in an age when so many people are cutting the cords of traditional media.

Emergency management officials always point to early-warning systems as the best way to prevent loss of life. It’s not difficult to imagine how an alert on your cellphone in a time of emergency could save lives.

It’s worth noting Canada is not alone. At a May 24 meeting in Mexico, the United Nations Global Platform on Disaster Risk Reduction focused on the need to shift from managing disasters to managing the risks of disaster. That included co-ordinating government and telecom efforts to ensure alerts are universal. In April, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission announced it’s giving telecom companies “approximately 12 months” to implement cellphone alert systems. We’ve been down this road before. In 2004, the Senate committee on national security and defence issued the first of many recommendations to establish a national public alerting system.

In 2007, the committee adduced evidence from the CRTC’s Scott Hutton that a system featuring interruptive television alerts would be in place by 2009. He repeatedly stressed that if an alert system was not in place on a voluntary basis by 2009, the CRTC would take steps to put one in place.

But Canadians had to wait another six years before the CRTC compelled broadcasters to create a national alert system.

Even then, Bell Canada and others were not fully compliant for several months.

Hence the skepticism about the CRTC’s latest pronouncement.

Littered with the seeds of delay and obfuscation, it begins with a supposedly firm deadline of next April 6, but then goes on to say a number of kinks would need to be worked out. It ends by stating that “the Commission expects that this new capability will be available in approximately 12 months.” Talk about a soft deadline.

This isn’t new technology. The U.S. has had a cellphone alert system in place since 2013.

Canadian Heritage Minister Mélanie Joly must put the full weight of her office behind the initiative. Canadians’ lives may well depend on it.