Gov’t looks to fix public alert system

OTTAWA — Officials behind the country’s system to alert mobile devices about impending natural disasters say there are still several kinks in the system to iron out, even as the alerts are being credited with saving lives just last week.

Mobile alerts went out across the National Capital Region on Friday as a storm slammed into the region and unleashed what Environment Canada now says were six tornadoes – three each in Ottawa and Gatineau, Que.

About 100 alerts have been issued across the country since April 6, when wireless warnings were added to the traditional television and radio messages broadcast by the National Public Alerting System, said Scott Shortliffe of the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission.

Yet while many of those alerts have been successful, Shortliffe said that issues remain, including that only cellphones and wireless devices connected to an LTE network can receive the messages.

The system uses what is called “cellbroadcast technology,” which sends a message to all wireless devices within a certain area with local cell towers, rather than sending messages to individual phones.

“The problem that we face is because the system is so complicated and there’s technological change, there are new handsets that enter the market constantly, we see that new problems can crop up,” he said. “Even on a system that’s been working perfectly.”

It’s believed such a problem was behind a three-hour delay in the issuing of an Amber Alert in Saskatchewan last week, while Shortliffe said he has heard from some residents in the National Capital Region who never received a tornado alert on Friday.

“I was thrilled that there were people who gave the system public credit that it saved lives in Dunrobin when the tornado came through,” he said. “But I’m also aware that there are people who are saying: ‘My phone didn’t go off. Why didn’t my phone go off?”’

Another issue identified for the Gatineau tornadoes was that some of the messages broadcast in Quebec were in English only, though Shortliffe said responsibility for the language and content of warnings lies with the provincial or municipal government issuing the alert.