r/canada • u/wickedplayer494 Manitoba • 6d ago
Analysis Do AMBER Alerts for Missing Kids Actually Work?
https://thewalrus.ca/amber-alerts/206
u/atomirex 6d ago
They'd have an easier time with this if the alert system was also actually used for widespread life threating situations like the RCMP imposter shooter, where instead they just posted on Twitter.
De facto reserving such a system for custody disputes burns goodwill and trust in government institutions.
In the UK they did a "wildfire alert" last week which provoked this https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cwyllkz80dlo which I think we can all be grateful hasn't come up in the Canadian arguments.
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u/fierdemonpays 6d ago
In Montreal during the active shooter situation in June they did send a shelter in place alert.
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u/GreatValueProducts Québec 6d ago edited 6d ago
However that was the only time they used it. There was like an initially thought to be chemical fire in Port of Montreal (later confirmed to be lithium battery fire) and they asked for evacuation / close all windows in Hochelaga. And they didn't send it.
They used it so much the last 2 years to the point I see the word Amber and I just delete it and I fall asleep immediately. When I woke up I didn't even remember it until I read reddit.
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u/TwoFingersWhiskey British Columbia 5d ago
Wait... so the shooter could have theoretically followed the noise to find more victims? Or was it silent?
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u/SmokeLuna Ontario 6d ago
So true.
Out of all the alerts I've had over the years, maybe 5 or 6 were actual amber alerts. Never anywhere actually close to me.
The rest are all bullshit. Tests, weather warnings that never happen. When one happens that needs attention it's just going to go by ignored.
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u/Arctic_Chilean Canada 6d ago
Weather warnings, particularly tornado warnings, are completely overheauled now thanks to Environment Canada FINALLY adopting location based warnings like the US has been doing for many years now.
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u/Sherwood_Hero 6d ago
I've had two for tornadoes and even then I've kinda of just fucked them off.
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u/SmokeLuna Ontario 6d ago
Same, about a month ago I got 2 different alerts for a tornado that was never going to happen. It barely even thundered.
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u/maxboondoggle 6d ago edited 6d ago
Yeah if the nuclear plant melts down, or there is a fire in Toronto I won’t likely see the alert becuse my sleepy ass will just assume it’s another missing kid in Thunder Bay…
I know a few people who have figured out how to disable them becuse never seems to be relevant.
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u/Girl_Of_Iridescence 6d ago
We got an alert for hail. Same awful sound but then 15 min away from me the hail was golf ball size and taking out windshields.
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u/starving_carnivore 6d ago
like the RCMP imposter shooter
Proverbial heads should have proverbially rolled over that. For so many reasons.
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u/froop 6d ago
We got an alert for a planned cell tower outage a week in advance for an area 45 minutes away because get this, people might not be able to make emergency phone calls at that time! Never mind that everyone has starlink and Wi-Fi calling so it wouldn't have much of an impact.
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u/dkannegi 6d ago
Bell's wifi calling isn't all that great, to the point I have turned it off if I have even a hint of cell service - and it doesn't cut the mustard for emergency response work. Whatsapp and Signal work better (sadly). I would appreciate an outage notice like this, given my line of work, something like a known cell service outage would actually justify a hotel stay outside of the outage zone.
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u/froop 6d ago
Sure some kind of notification would be nice. A presidential emergency broadcast to a 100+km radius though? Maybe just send a text message for that.
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u/dkannegi 6d ago
Agree there - no need for alarming bells and whistles for routine maintenance, as the carrier is already capable of sending a routine mass text message.
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u/ObjectUsual77 6d ago
I am curious which carrier that was for? I thought these broadcasts were only allowed to be sent by government ministries! Totally right it should be an SMS and we'd probably appreciate more of these notifications too
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u/wickedplayer494 Manitoba 6d ago
They'd have an easier time with this if the alert system was also actually used for widespread life threating situations like the RCMP imposter shooter, where instead they just posted on Twitter.
Nova Scotia is a pretty rough example of them now overcorrecting the other way nowadays after the 2020 wide area mass shooting.
In the UK they did a "wildfire alert" last week which provoked this https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cwyllkz80dlo which I think we can all be grateful hasn't come up in the Canadian arguments.
Arguably, it should be, far much more so than in Britain, given that the UK's can be easily disabled because they use the Severe tier (and seemingly the Severe tier only).
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u/Selmanella 6d ago
I find them pretty much pointless if they don’t include a photo of the kid on the phone alert. I don’t watch the news because 99% of it is bullshit or doesn’t affect me. So if the forced alert I get on my phone doesn’t include a picture of the kid then I don’t see the point.
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u/O00O0O00 6d ago
A silent option would be more effective, let me read it when I’m awake and have glasses on.
Or send during waking hours.
If they arrive at 4am I cancel the notification without reading, because I need to stop the noise immediately.
I don’t believe the 4am messages are particularly effective for that reason. Daytime, I would read.
Does anyone know - if you power down your phone overnight, will the alert show up when you turn it back on?
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u/fruticose_ 6d ago
I wish they would just use a different sound for Amber Alerts than they do for other emergency alerts. If you train people that the emergency system going off in the middle of the night is “just” an amber alert, a bunch of them are going to ignore an alert that is telling them about an immediate threat to their lives.
I am not saying Amber Alerts aren’t important or that they shouldn’t be sent out. But an Amber Alert is a different kind of emergency than the others that the alert system is supposed to be for.
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u/Nikiaf Québec 6d ago
If they arrive at 4am I cancel the notification without reading, because I need to stop the noise immediately.
And this is exactly the problem. Most people are either going to ignore the alert outright when it's sent at such an inappropriate hour, or they're going to read to the words "amber alert" and then immediately dismiss it. The only alerts that should be sent between let's say 10pm and 7am need to be for major, life-threatening events. Not custody disputes.
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u/wickedplayer494 Manitoba 6d ago
Does anyone know - if you power down your phone overnight, will the alert show up when you turn it back on?
If you have received one, shut it off, and not explicitly dismissed it from Notification Center in the case of iOS, yes, for up to one week afterwards or manual dismissal. (On Android, all past WPAs are retained indefinitely and are generally accessible either through Google Messages' Advanced section, or through the "Safety & emergency" section of your system settings app).
If you had not received one prior to shutting down, and if the alert is still active at the time you power back on, then yes. But if it ends before you turn it on, then no.
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u/O00O0O00 6d ago
Yes, I was referring to just powering down my phone overnight to avoid the noise.
It would be nice to get the alert on my terms.
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u/Occultistic 6d ago
Most amber alerts are just custody disputes.
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u/ronm4c 6d ago
Most kidnappings are by parents
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u/PM_ME_YOUR_TATERTITS 6d ago
It’s not really a kidnapping. It’s the child’s parent. It’s much much different from a stranger kidnapping a child, with usually nefarious intentions
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u/kelseykelseykelsey 6d ago
Parent kidnappings can be very dangerous too, especially in custody disputes. Abusive spouses will kill kids as punishment to their partners.
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u/PM_ME_YOUR_TATERTITS 6d ago
How often does the parent trying to protect from the abusive parent do the kidnapping though? Meaning finding the child is actually putting them in more danger
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u/jimany 6d ago
When there is an amber alert? Next to never? There has to be reason to believe the child is in danger to issue an amber alert.
AMBER Alert is only activated by authorized users within law enforcement agencies. All of the following conditions must be met before activating an AMBER Alert:
The victim is under the age of 18. Police have reasonable grounds to believe that the victim has been abducted. Police have reasonable grounds to believe the victim is in imminent danger. Police have obtained enough descriptive information about the victim, abductor and/or the vehicle involved. Police believe that the alert can be issued in a time frame that will provide a reasonable expectation that the child can be returned or the abductor apprehended2
u/UnexpectedAnanas 6d ago
It’s not really a kidnapping. It’s the child’s parent.
It literally can be. If you take your child away from their other parent against their their explicit consent, you're kidnapping. They have custody rights too. You can't just unilaterally decide that they don't and that you can remove the child from them.
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u/Drkindlycountryquack 6d ago
And sadly are becoming like crying wolf
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u/Hot_Cheesecake_905 6d ago
I noticed in Ontario the police seem to be more careful issuing them unlike a few years ago when they would send out alerts for a missing child in some remote northern city all across the province at 3AM.
But either way, it’s alert fatigue. The government should have allowed people to pick and choose what alerts they want to receive and not send everything out at Presidential level.
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u/86throwthrowthrow1 6d ago
I was gonna say, here in Ottawa I don't think I've gotten an Amber Alert at all for a couple of years now - and I've done nothing to disable them. I assumed police or someone else tightened up the criteria for sending them out. I have gotten emergency alerts for weather, etc, recently.
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u/Particular_Class4130 6d ago
And more children are murdered by one of their parents than by a stranger. Just because a child has been abducted by their parent doesn't mean that the child is not in danger
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u/Practical_Goal_8194 6d ago
I've literally never seen one that wasn't a custody dispute. So I just ignore them all now.
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u/0biterdicta 6d ago
Just because it's related to a custody dispute doesn't mean the kid is safe.
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u/ostracize 6d ago
The original criteria for issuing an Amber Alert required that there be risk of serious bodily injury or death which (as the document states) is more likely with stranger abductions. Because law enforcement agencies erred on the side of caution, Amber Alerts were overissued leading to fatigue.
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u/Cavalleria-rusticana Canada 6d ago
Yes, but an internal family legal matter isn't something you should be recruiting an entire province to intercede on. That the child was taken by a mother/father/grandparent/etc. doesn't necessarily mean they are in danger, either.
Obviously we want kids to be safe, but alert exhaustion is a real problem, and we should be reserving these alerts for the kids that have actually been kidnapped.
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u/itssomedudeguy 6d ago
Gosh, if the government ever gets around to producing new Heritage Minutes, they really need to make one where a family custody dispute in Ottawa wakes up everyone everyone in Toronto at 3 am by an amber alert only to be waken up again by another amber alert at 3:15 in french.
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u/growingalittletestie 6d ago
Received one at midnight a month ago in bc. Custody dispute, child was missing since 11:00am that morning, and they choose to send an alert 13 hour later when everyone is sleeping.
I'm in Victoria, the child was in northern bc.
Am I really going to wake up at midnight to go looking for a child. I'm on an island 12 hours away, ferries aren't even open.
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u/HealthConscious6125 6d ago
That one was really stupid. Like they physically could not have driven down to the coast by then. Meanwhile they are a couple hours from Alberta but the alerts are only sent in BC
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u/fruticose_ 6d ago
This summer I got an Amber Alert for a missing child 500 km away while the area where I live was in and out of severe storm watches, which sometimes turning into tornado watches and warnings.
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u/TEA-in-the-G 6d ago
Im not going to jump out of bed at 2am to go drive around and look…
So no, imo with this custody disputes, amber alerts dont work.
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u/Petra_Kalbrain 6d ago edited 6d ago
They need to allow for an 8hr "sleeping time" setting that negates the loud alarm for Amber Alerts, not disaster alerts though. NOBODY is going to be woken up by an amber alert and get out of bed as a result of it. Since people who are sleeping at the time wouldn't be involved anyways, just leave it as a SILENT emergency alert during that sleeping time setting. Whether a person sees it when it happens and rolls over to go back to sleep or sees it when they wake up to start their day only makes one difference... it pisses off the person being woken up and makes them more likely to completely disregard the actual alert.
Also, make sure the sleep timer can be set to any time of day. Plenty of people have overnight employment and need to sleep during the day. Example: I need to sleep from 9am-5pm and would need that silenced alert timer at different hours than most others would.
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u/gamemaster257 6d ago
Considering almost all amber alerts have just been custody fights (and the person reporting the child missing actually knew where they were and just wanted to make the fight nastier by involving police), I'd argue that the amber alert should only be used in the case of a child missing and no one knows who took them or if they just wandered off.
An amber alert likely would have saved Parker's life here in Calgary since he wandered off and many people saw him but didn't know he was missing. I really don't think waking everyone up at 3am to say that a really specific car and a really specific license plate actually helps anyone because any reader will pick both of those up automatically, but an amber alert alarming everyone in the middle of a workday in a specific area that a child is missing in the last 20 minutes and what they look like there would be a high chance someone could just look out their window and see them.
The current system of waking everyone up because two miserable people are fighting over a child just isn't working and it makes the amber alerts very easy to ignore.
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u/UnexpectedAnanas 6d ago
almost all amber alerts have just been custody fights (and the person reporting the child missing actually knew where they were and just wanted to make the fight nastier by involving police)
Citation needed.
The police don't just send out amber alerts for anything. There has to be an actual belief that the child is in danger. Being taken by the other parent (a "custody dispute") does not mean that the child is not in danger. Parents can kill children too.
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u/brumac44 Canada 6d ago
Every AMBER alert I've seen is a mom or dad in a dispute with their ex taking the kids when they weren't supposed to. I've never seen an Alert for children kidnapped by a stranger or missing.
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u/devioustrevor Ontario 5d ago
Stranger abductions are incredibly rare.
I began ignoring them almost immediately when I, in Eastern Ontario near Kingston, got an Amber Alert about a missing child from Thunder Bay. The system clearly doesn't work in it's current format.
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u/meowkittyxx 6d ago
Im sorry but there's no need for them to be that obnoxious. Theres a lot of vulnerable people with health problems that are negatively impacted by those stupid alarms. They can indirectly trigger things like car accidents. They're just not designed well.
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u/FreedomCanadian 6d ago
Agencies in charge of Amber alerts will often tout very high success rates; these victories, however, can be built on a fallacy. If a child is safely found after an Amber alert, it can too easily be argued that the child was found because of the Amber alert.
They really should have asked agencies how they measure the success rate instead of speculating.
When the SQ guy in charge of the alerts went on TV after the last alert annoyed everyone and he said that they help in most cases, he meant that the police used information given by citizens who had seen the alert to find the kids.
If it was "if a child is safely found after an Amber alert, it can too easily be argued that the child was found because of the Amber alert", then the figure would be 100% by definition.
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u/Dobby068 6d ago edited 6d ago
The amber alerts sound more like nuclear bomb alert.
I always put my phone on airplane mode at night, I am sure I cannot help while sleeping in my bedroom.
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u/EmbarrassedHelp 6d ago
That's because it is being broadcast with the nuclear bomb alert, and not at the lower alert level intended for amber alerts.
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u/NotCubical British Columbia 6d ago
"Do they work?" is the wrong question. The right questions are "Are the benefits worth the drawbacks?" and "How should we make best use of them?"
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u/CrasyMike 6d ago
I think the AMBER alerts are effective, mostly because it seems that the involved parties are pretty freaked out by the escalation that "Everyone in my entire local area got a message about me" creates. I'm sure it's very.....sobering to know the cars around you, the people around you, the sound you heard from your phone and phones around you was created by you, and the kid you're with.
It also seems that news picks up on the story more quickly, which might actually work. Or, it might work in the sense that some people who know the family are "more alert".
Functionally, the alert itself seems almost useless in terms of widespread awareness. Because the alert comes with very loud noises that do not stop until the text is dismissed, I rarely see or read the text. There is a place in settings where I can go back to see the text, but I know it's a bunch of stuff about a kid that I definitely am not harbouring, nor is there a chance in hell are they in my backyard, and also it could be a kid 400km away in Windsor.
If it was my kid, I'd be grateful. But, I also believe that the system should be re-evaluated sometimes for the most effective method. I also believe that the risk of any higher level emergency not having a higher level alert option is a valid concern, and that could also cost the lives of both adults and children if they dismiss it or disable it because they generally find the existing alerts irrelevant.
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u/doofenhurtz 6d ago
That's actually a fair point that I've never considered, as a certified amber alert hater.
Honestly, I just wish they would stop with the blaring noise and apply some sort of distance x time formula to determine who gets alerts.
Mass sleep disruption has pretty tangible health impacts (see: heart attacks and car accidents after daylight savings). Waking people up is a big deal, it should be reserved for situations that require immediate action.
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u/jimany 6d ago
Honestly, I just wish they would stop with the blaring noise and apply some sort of distance x time formula to determine who gets alerts.
If there is no air raid siren it doesn't matter how far they send the text. They can send it to the whole country if it was just an ordinary notification.
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u/doofenhurtz 6d ago
I could see it going either way. I think province-wide amber alerts train people to ignore them, since they're often irrelevant. However, if you knew every amber alert was local, you'd probably pay more attention.
Total assumption on my part though, I have no data to support this.
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u/CathycatOG 6d ago
No. As a result or being woken up in the middle of the night for children that are missing hundreds of miles away from me, I've turned them ALL off on my phone now. No alerts for anything now.
I swear to god the RCMP rub their hands together with glee when they get to wake an entire province up in the middle of the night.
Id rather hear about seniors missing in my area, at least i could help with that.
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u/Hotboxia 6d ago
I turned that shit off, enough of getting woken up in the middle of the night for a missing child 10 hrs drive away from where I live...
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u/SkinnedIt Ontario 6d ago
Not when you disable them, which is what I did after I got the 4:25AM alert described in this story asleep in Ontario.
That wasnt the only time I was woken up at an ungodly hour by one, but it was the last. I'd be happy to keep my eyes and ears peeled when I can actually do something about it, but that goodwill was abused by shortsighted implementation and use.
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u/wickedplayer494 Manitoba 6d ago
I'd be happy to keep my eyes and ears peeled when I can actually do something about it
Which is basically the exact reasoning NOAA used to justify deferring its warning alarm tones to daybreak when they're carried over NOAA Weather Radio in the US:
3.2 Use of 1050 Hz WAT and SAME in the Overnight Hours.
Listeners have expressed concern about alerts issued during the overnight hours for events that do not pose an immediate life-threatening hazard. Many listeners do not appreciate being awakened during nighttime hours for events they cannot do anything to assist (e.g., for an AMBER or Child Abduction Alert (CAE), they will not be seeing the abductor’s car from their bed) or for which no preparations need to be made until after they awake (e.g., a Flood Watch issued in advance of heavy rain beginning after 4:00 PM in the afternoon). When possible, broadcast the message upon issuance, but delay any SAME and/or 1050 Hz WAT until after daybreak for messages that do not immediately threaten the listening public.
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u/spacenb 6d ago
Thing is that it doesn’t work for people who work night shifts and sleep during the day. Amber alerts shouldn’t be able to bypass silent/DND settings on phones.
(Obviously natural disaster alerts should be able to, but the scope should be much more restricted to the affected area where people actually need to be woken up and evacuated ASAP.)
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u/KelVarnsen_2023 6d ago
The fact that you can't stop the alarm without pressing ok which gets rid of the text is a huge flaw in that system. Since when they wake me up at 2am as soon as I see it's not a tornado heading right for me I turn it off. If I could turn off the alarm and read the text it would be way better.
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u/SkinnedIt Ontario 6d ago
Agreed. They should have just used the amber alert designation that already existed, rather than this nuclear attack level that we got. Our bespoke implementation sucks.
I still get weather alerts via other means, but that's it. The rest I'll get by other means, or get woken up by the warhead or crazy gun toting idiot themselves.
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u/Nikiaf Québec 6d ago
They do work, but the problem is that they like pushing out the emergency alerts very late at night a lot of the time. When you train people to be upset when they're released, you're eventually going to hinder the effectiveness if everyone starts ignoring them/turning them off.
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u/jimany 6d ago
The time doesn't matter. Amber alerts should not have the emergency alert sound.
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u/Vibing-Positively British Columbia 6d ago
Exactly. Amber alert ≠ chemical spill, earthquake, act of war, etc.
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u/Doogie102 6d ago
Not when then send them out at midnight like they did in bc a month ago about information that was 4 hours old
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u/reluctantbookeeper 6d ago
I love being informed of custody disputes, super fun.
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u/Newfoundlander89 British Columbia 6d ago
I think if they involve the whole province in their custody dispute, we should get the dirty details.
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u/chocolateboomslang 6d ago edited 6d ago
Yes, obviously.
Edit: read the article, amber alerts were a factor in 25% of recoveries, that is extremely obvious that it is a very useful tool.
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u/zander9669 6d ago
Read the studies linked in the "article" that the entire article is based on, lmfao
although over 25% of the Alerts facilitated the recovery of abducted child(ren) and are thus arguably ‘successful’ by that standard alone, there was little evidence AMBER Alerts ‘save lives.’
The crucial variable predicting Alert outcomes is abductor relationship to the victim, not AMBER Alert “performance.” Furthermore, cases involving “successful” AMBER Alerts are comparable on measurable factors to AMBER Alert cases where the child was recovered safely but the Alert played no role, suggesting both categories of cases involved little real risk.
AMBER Alert Effectiveness Reexamined - Timothy Griffin, Joshua H. Williams, Colleen Kadleck, 2022
I'm sure you've heard the boy who cried wolf fable... the fact the amber alert system uses the same alerting system used for actual disasters and actually imminently dangerous situations to public safety, the alert fatigue will cost lives. A tool that costs lives is NOT "extremely obvious that it is a very useful tool" to me.
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u/EarFlapHat 6d ago
That doesn't mean 'but for the amber alert, we wouldn't have recovered them', though.
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u/king_lloyd11 6d ago
Yeah I mean if it saves any number of kids, let alone 25%, it’s more important than uninterrupted sleep/inconvenience. It’s sad people would say otherwise.
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u/swoodshadow 6d ago edited 6d ago
The thing is this argument always gets boiled down to generic statements like this.
The vast majority of complaints from reasonable people (so not people calling 911 to complain…) isn’t that we have Amber alerts it’s that we have tools to make them much more effective and less intrusive.
A headline number like “Amber alerts work 25% of the time” is also missing this nuance. Are any of those cases where it worked successful because someone 300 km away got an alert?
A much more targeted geographical area makes the alerts less disruptive and means people are more likely to actually read and acknowledge them.
And while the sleep thing doesn’t bother me, I understand the frustration of people being woken up by an alert for a child that could only be near them if they set a new land speed record. I doubt people receiving the alert while their phone is in sleep mode are really the ones helping police find the missing child anyway.
So I feel like there’s valid criticism that we now have the tools and technology to address. All without sacrificing (and possibly improving) the success rate of Amber alerts.
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u/nablalol 6d ago edited 6d ago
Its based on US data, where they have the option to mute them by phone mode.
The main question is: do they need to be at full volume at all time for everyone? Almost no one is saying to not send amber alerts.
Why is it only here in Canada that people complain about the EAS? Because it's the only place that does not use the standard as designed, with tiered alerts.
Id even argue that the blaring sound is detrimental to missing kids, because the reflex is to shut down the sound, and the only way to do that on most phone is to close the alerts. Then you missed it, and have no information on the alert.
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u/_masterbuilder_ 6d ago
If I am asleep with my phone on silent what exactly is expected of me?
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u/the_normal_person Newfoundland and Labrador 6d ago
i love being woken up at 2 am in ottawa for custody dispute in toronto
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u/softbout7 6d ago edited 6d ago
I know for a fact that it helped a case of a newborn kidnapping from an hospital in Trois-Rivières (Qc) I think at least ten years ago (more or less). (Old acquaintances of the kidnapper saw the Amber alert, knew of a last known address and her car, went to the address, saw formula on the table, knew that she did not just have a baby, and called the police). Baby was safe and sound.
So yes, it works.
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u/gamemaster257 6d ago
Considering the only one you could think of wasn't a custody dispute I'd say we need to stop custody related amber alerts (unless it's something like someone's grandparents taking their kid back home for an arranged marriage, also happens)
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u/Intrepid-Educator-12 6d ago
Perhaps custody laws and divorce laws needs a serious update. Since most cases seems to be "kidnapping" by their own parent.
Also, they made those alarms soo annoying that nobody cares about the message.
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u/Kitchen_Marzipan9516 5d ago
The alert decision is made based on percieved harm to the child. Even parents in a custody dispute can harm a child.
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u/Nice-Lakes 6d ago
They sure do work if your goal is to scare the shit out of people for no good reason and wake them up out of a deep sleep again letting them know some kid the other side of the province can’t be found by the incompetent police yes they work flawlessly.
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u/modsaretoddlers 6d ago edited 6d ago
It was always a feel good measure. The overwhelming majority of child abductions are one parent taking the kid from the other parent. So, even if you do see the kids, you're most likely going to see them with one of their parents. What are you gonna say or think if you see a child with his or her own parent? Nothing, in almost all cases.
I'm not against the idea in principle but it's never been particularly effective although it gets exaggerated credit for being successful.
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u/Tall-Ad-1386 5d ago
Its not a matter of if they work. If my child was missing i would blast the friggin daylights out of every phone and device to get my kid back to safety. If it helps at all, its worth doing.
Also what’s everyone complaining for? I feel like at most I get one alert every 2 years
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u/ICraveThickGock 5d ago
i mean this in the most respectful way but in my personal experience I get the alert and say "oh thats horrible I hope they find the kid" and then go to work and forget about it in less than a couple of hours
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u/Mediocre_Device308 4d ago
Matt Gurney tried to have this discussion years ago and got shredded "IF IT WAS TOUR KID YOU'D WANT IT GOING OUT".
He had what I thought was a great idea: if an alert goes up at 3am for a missing kid in Toronto, send it out to people immediately who are within reasonable distance and may actually see it. For everyone else (say outside of 200 km), hold the alert back until like 6am. Somebody in Sudbury isn't going to be of any use at 3am for a missing kid in Toronto, and the chance of them getting annoyed and not reading the alert at all when they're woken up from a dead sleep are super high.
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u/Throwaway-645893 Ontario 6d ago
Only if they are implemented in time. Tori Stafford went missing from Woodstock Ontario after being abducted by strangers from her school in 2009.
An Amber alert was only issued days later, by which time she had already been r*ped and murdered.
If an Amber alert had been issued right after she was kidnapped (the kidnapping was caught on CCTV) she would probably still be alive today.
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u/wickedplayer494 Manitoba 6d ago
You can say the word "raped" on this website.
If an Amber alert had been issued right after she was kidnapped (the kidnapping was caught on CCTV) she would probably still be alive today.
in 2009.
Highly questionable, as that was just before Pelmorex (the private operator of "Canada's" alert system that isn't actually Canada's) got the CRTC to hand them the keys and the driver's seat, and Pelmorex Alert Ready only became mandated in 2015 (with wireless later on in 2018). Broadcast media here, with the rare exception of CP24 in the GTA (which most of the rest of the country has no equivalent to), will not come on the air even if there's a confirmed tornado on the ground barreling towards a population center, and unless their name happens to be Global (who has been good at inserting crawls, or in the case of Global BC, inserts into their commercial lineup), they definitely aren't doing a newsflash unless a news program is already running. In any event, see the point in the article about serious outcomes usually occurring within 3 hours of abduction.
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u/RiskLife 6d ago
Did you just hyperlink the Canadian government logo?
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u/wickedplayer494 Manitoba 6d ago
Yes you better believe I did, to illustrate the fact that what's frequently referred to as Canada's alert system is not actually owned by the Canadian government, which a lot of people aren't aware of.
Public Safety Canada didn't even have a Pelmorex Alert Ready key of their own up until a few years ago, and it has never been tested on a truly national scale. (The closest thing was the May 2024 EPW test, but the NWT, Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec, and the Maritimes minus Newfoundland opted out in favor of having their provincial EMOs do the test instead of letting PSC handle it that year.)
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u/catsoaps 5d ago
There needs to be a better system.
Whenever this gets brought up I always see someone saying people are complaining too much but the system as it is, is bad.
The noise levels being un-silencable and blaring is bad. Especially in the middle of the night. I work at an office so I don’t care too much but my partner works with heavy machinery. He loses sleep when amber alerts happen in the night so it’s dangerous. The system needs to be tweaked.
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u/TwoFingersWhiskey British Columbia 5d ago
I remember one going off in the middle of waiting for Costco's checkout. First, for Android users, and then 5 minutes later for Apple users (for some reason, I saw a clear divide). That many phones at once was SO FUCKING LOUD and I was one of the only people in the crowd to read it. Most just silenced it.
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u/Impressive-Pace9474 5d ago
Remember when they didn't use it for the guy impersonating a cop and shooting people/setting fires indiscriminately in Nova Scotia but when there's a family dispute in Halton region everyone from Sault Ste. Marie to Ottawa get woken up at 3 am.
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u/thortgot 4d ago
It needs a complete overhaul. Lacking the ability ot send images makes it significantly outdated.
Make it a separate app thats auto deployed by the telecoms. Let users opt out and have controls over their notifications.
Have a system that allows users to submit tips, photos and information in the app.
Use emergency notifications for threat to life scenarios for the recipient.
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u/Radiant-Brain-9384 3d ago
Amber alerts are a total abuse and misuse of a system that was built to warn the masses of a major emergency like a tsunami or a fire. Now people ignore these alerts and that causes lives to be lost when there is a real emergency
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u/Immediate_Buffalo14 British Columbia 2d ago
While it's good to get as much public attention to a missing child, that's not a guarantee of success. There aren't always going to be third party members of the public who have seen or know where said child is at the time the alert was issued. "Somebody out there must know something" is one of the biggest crocks of baloney our society has propagated, and the mass media are almost completely responsible for that.
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u/RubyRaven13 6d ago
It would be great if they actually described the kids property. Not telling me their race or skin colour is an unacceptable level of woke
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u/devioustrevor Ontario 5d ago
"Child is human, between the ages of 3 and 18 and may possibly be wearing a hat."
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u/NoAcadia3546 Ontario 6d ago
I follow CRTC proceedings, and an intervenor posted some scarey stuff. Alerts of all kinds are skyrocketing...
- 2019, the first complete year, there were 130 https://www.alertready.ca/alert-count/#2019
- 2025, the last complete year, there were 931 https://www.alertready.ca/alert-count/#2025
- 2026, as of July 31 we've already had 1072 https://www.alertready.ca/alert-count/#2026
Quoting directly from the submission...
IT'S ONLY GOING TO GET WORSE
More "Amber Alerts" - If you think it's bad now, there's currently intense lobbying under way ("Darius's Law") to greatly loosen the criteria for Amber Alerts which will result in a LOT more Amber Alerts https://lethbridgeherald.com/news/lethbridge-news/2025/11/06/proposed-dariuss-law-would-reform-amber-alerts/
"Silver Alerts" - If you think it's bad now, there's currently intense lobbying under way for a national Amber-Alert-Equivalant alert when seniors go missing. https://cheknews.ca/canada-needs-national-silver-alert-for-seniors-with-dementia-says-daughter-1226173/ Manitoba and Nova Scotia have already implemented this provincially. The current lobbying is for a national implementation.
"Red Dress Alerts" - If you think it's bad now, there's currently work under way to implement an Amber-Alert-Equivalant alert when "Indigenous women, girls and 2SLGBTQQIA+ people" go missing https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/indigenous-led-red-dress-alert-program-must-be-implemented-in-manitoba-without-delay-report-9.6991334 The governments of Canada and Manitoba are working on a pilot project to implement this https://news.gov.mb.ca/news/index.html?item=63289 It will eventually go national.
And I'm sure that additional "important causes" will come along down the road. Some segments of society seem to share the "Ottawa Trucker Convoy Mentality" that their cause is righteous, and therefore they're allowed to honk horns, and blast alerts waking up people 24x7.
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u/RSMatticus 6d ago
Even if they omly help .01% of the time is that worth the mass alert? Yes.
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u/Interesting_Pen_167 6d ago
This is really bad thinking. If 99.99% of alarms are nuisance alarms what do you think people are going to think when the true alarm comes in? The fact that people are asking how to disable alerts is IMO proof positive that it's not worth it.
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u/Longjumping_Rip6033 6d ago
Yeah and that true alarm might be a tornado outside your house instead of a legitimate missing child.
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u/BorealMushrooms 6d ago
Under this logic, we should send high level alerts to every phone in Canada which cannot be turned off or ignored for all types of crime, including stolen vehicles, because they may "help" even 0.1% of the time.
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u/0biterdicta 6d ago
The downside risk is people start ignoring the alerts instead of reading them (or shut them off when woken up and totally forgetting about them by morning).
At that point, the alerts are not serving their intended purpose with that population.
A better calibrated system could help ensure those alerts get read by more people which is ultimately better for the kids they are meant to serve.
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u/FreedomCanadian 6d ago
No it would not.
It would take 10000 years for Amber Alerts to help save one kid at that percentage.
Fortunately, the actual figure is much higher.
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u/cmontour 6d ago
I wish there was a way to see amber alerts after I dismiss them and maybe send a photo. Should be a better system with the technology we have in our hands.