Despite complaints, officials say emergency system worked as planned in 2019

Torontosun.com
Jan. 15, 2020
Taylor Blewett

Sixteen Amber Alert messages were broadcast across Ontario in eight instances of child abduction in 2019.
Despite some public griping, Amber Alert and other emergency messages pushed out in Ontario last year worked as intended, according to authorities and operators behind the system.

Sixteen Amber Alert messages were broadcast across the province in eight separate instances of child abduction in 2019, including a tragic case detailed in a video posted to social media by the Ontario Provincial Police.

Ryan Kay, a Vaughan municipal employee, was driving home from work on Highway 400 when he heard an Amber Alert broadcast on the radio and his cellphone. Thirty seconds later he saw a car matching the description of the suspect’s. His 911 call led to the arrest of Roopesh Rajkumar, the Brampton man at the centre of the Amber Alert who was subsequently charged with first-degree murder in the killing of his 11-year-old daughter Riya Rajkumar.

“We use it because it is successful,” said OPP Staff Sgt. Stacey Whaley, the Amber Alert manager for the province. “Is every single time someone going to call as a result of an Amber Alert? Probably not. But if there’s an opportunity or an occasion where it’s going to work at all, then we’re going to utilize that.”

The Alert Ready system, which delivers AMBER and other alerts on issues considered “a threat to life” --think fires, earthquakes, or terror attacks --has been operational since 2010. However, it was in April 2018 that the CRTC started requiring wireless service providers to distribute the emergency bulletins on their LTE networks, launching the alerts into the pockets and consciousness of Canadians across the country.

They haven’t always been well-received.

Some cantankerous Canadians made headlines with their 911 calls, complaining about being disturbed by phones buzzing loudly over children abducted hundreds of kilometres away.

But Amber Alerts are broadcast across Ontario because abductions can play out over long distances.

“If your child is missing and is in danger, has been abducted then you’re going to want as many as many sets of eyes as possible,” said Whaley.

As time goes on, he said, complaints about being inconvenienced seem to be decreasing.

But this isn’t the only issue the public has flagged with Alert Ready. When a tornado blew through Ottawa in June, some residents received alerts on their phones while others did not, sparking worries about the system’s reliability.

Martin Belanger is the director of public alerting at Pelmorex, the company that operates the National Alert Aggregation and Dissemination System. Essentially, it’s the middleman between the government bodies that prepare the alerts and the TV, radio and wireless service providers that broadcast them to Canadians.

Ontario saw 49 emergency alert messages in 2019 --16 Amber and 33 tornado alerts. In all cases, “From a distribution perspective, the system worked as intended,” said Belanger. “That means the alert was distributed on television, radio and compatible cellphones.”

Important to understand is that government authorities such as the OPP or Environment Canada are responsible for the decision to issue the alert as well as its content, timing and geographical reach. On the other side of the process, wireless devices must be equipped with the latest version of their operating software and connected to an LTE cellular network at the time the alert is active.

An emergency alert’s delivery could also be disrupted by a cellphone tower that’s under maintenance, said Belanger. “I think the key message here is not to rely solely on wireless devices.”

In addition to TV and radio, alerts can also be accessed via social media and apps including the Weather Network, said Belanger.

However, building public faith in the Alert Ready system wasn’t made any easier by Ontario’s first emergency alert of 2020. It warned of an “incident” at the Pickering Nuclear Station and turned out to be a false alarm, traced back to a training exercise at the Provincial Emergency Operations Centre.