Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on
National Security and Defence
Issue No. 19 - Evidence - Meeting of Feburary 5, 2018
OTTAWA, Monday, February 5, 2018
The Standing Senate Committee on National Security and Defence met this day at 1:05 p.m. to examine and report on Canada’s national security and defence policies, practices, circumstances and capabilities (topic: emergency warning system).
Senator Gwen Boniface (Chair) in the chair.
[English]
(The committee continued in camera.)
(The committee resumed in public.)
The Chair: Welcome to the Standing Senate Committee on National Security and Defence.
Before we begin, I would ask my colleagues to introduce themselves, starting with our vice-chair.
[Translation]
Senator Dagenais: Jean-Guy Dagenais from Quebec.
Senator Boisvenu: Pierre-Hugues Boisvenu from Quebec.
Senator McIntyre: Paul McIntyre from New Brunswick.
[English]
Senator McPhedran: Mary Lou McPhedran, independent senator from Manitoba.
Senator Richards: David Richards, New Brunswick.
The Chair: Thank you.
This afternoon, under the auspices of the order of reference to examine and report on Canada’s national security and defence policies, practices, circumstances and capabilities, we will hear evidence related to Canada’s emergency alert system.
In this first panel, we will hear from the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, and after we will hear from Pelmorex Weather Networks (Television) Inc.
Representing the CRTC, we welcome Scott Shortliffe, Chief Consumer Officer and Executive Director; and Rachelle Frenette, Acting General Counsel and Deputy Executive Director.
Mr. Shortliffe and Ms. Frenette, we have already received your opening statement, but we will give you the opportunity to highlight any element of it or add anything you would like in terms of a statement at this time. We will then move to questions.
Scott Shortliffe, Chief Consumer Officer and Executive Director, Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission: Thank you very much, senator. I don’t wish to add much because I want to have time for your questions.
I do want to highlight something about timing that may not have been entirely clear in our opening statement.
The commission has asked that the system be ready to transmit messages as of April 6, 2018. That leads to this logical question: Does this mean that emergency wireless alerts will go out as of April 6? But in fact it’s a double-key system.
Imagine a door with two locks. The first lock is that the system has to be ready on April 6, and all the reports we have had say that it will be. The second lock is that the commission asked the CRTC Interconnection Steering Committee — I’ll explain what that is in a moment — to examine a few issues, and the commission has to issue a decision on those issues before it will officially start the emergency alerting. The commission is considering these issues currently, so I can’t say whether they will be ready by April 6 or whether there will be a delay in the system, only that the commission needs to examine these issues beforehand.
Specifically, the CRTC Interconnection Steering Committee, CISC, is a body which looks at technical issues. It has up to 100 members at a time and various subcommittees that break down technical issues in the telecommunications field.
The CISC was asked to look at two issues in particular. The first was about testing the emergency alert system. As you know, when you watch television, every once in a while you will get a test. You will hear the tone, you will see the banner, and it will say that this is a test of the system. With wireless emergency alerting, there will be tests as well. There were questions: Should you have tests where five times a year everyone’s cellphone rings and you get that tone? Should you use a test channel which will not inconvenience the majority of Canadians? What is the right balance? Because you want Canadians to be aware of what the emergency message is, but you also don’t want the messages happening so often that Canadians become blasé and don’t pay attention when they get the unique vibration or unique banner.
That was the first issue. Connected to that was we asked the CISC to take a look at what should be the public awareness campaign. The two are interwoven because we need to know what the test message regime is before we can look at what the communications to the public are.
Now, they were asked to report in the fall. They did. The commission is currently looking at that issue and will issue a decision to say whether the work was acceptable, whether we have blessed that and whether, therefore, the system can launch or not.
I just wanted to add that bit of clarification because in rereading the material, I realized that what happens on April 6 may not be entirely clear.
I would just like to add, finally, that my understanding is the wireless service providers, what we called the WSPs — by the way, I apologize. This is an acronym-filled field. If I ever start using too much jargon, please stop me and ask for a reminder. But the wireless service providers are taking April 6 as the drop-dead date because that’s what the commission told them to do. They are making every effort to be ready as of that date. Then the commission needs to make sure that its two issues placed in front of CISC are ready.
The final piece, which is outside the commission’s control, is that the emergency management organizations that actually issue the alerts need to be ready to go. That is done province by province or at the federal level.
So there are a variety of complex issues that have to be settled before emergency alerts will actually be issued. I wanted to add that to my opening statement, but other than that, I am pleased to answer any questions you may have.
[Translation]
Senator Dagenais: Thank you for your presentation, Mr. Shortliffe. Obviously, these warning systems are important. They are widely used in the United States, including through television and social media. Many agents use the Internet and social media.
Have you considered this avenue?
Mr. Shortliffe: Yes. Your question is interesting. When the CRTC looked into the issue of emergency warning systems for the public, there were two possibilities, via social media and text messages. Finally, we decided that the best approach was to send a message to cellphones. There is no option for refusing to receive the message. So if you have a smart phone, you receive an emergency message. Any software can do it right now. This is the first method to ensure that all cellphone users receive this information.
The idea is also to receive emergency messages integrated with the radio, television and cellphones, so that all users receive the same information at the same time.
Senator Dagenais: I understand that people must receive the same information at the same time. Diversity is one of Canada’s qualities. There is English and French, but other languages as well. Has any consideration been given to sending the message in several languages?
Mr. Shortliffe: That’s a good question. However, this does not fall within the CRTC’s purview. The emergency organizations that issue these messages are responsible for the content. For instance, Quebec could ask to have all messages in French and English, but with a preference for French. Other provinces might ask for other languages, but it is their choice, not the commission’s choice. The Department of Public Safety is responsible for this at the federal level.
Senator Dagenais: Thank you, Mr. Shortliffe.
[English]
Senator McIntyre: Thank you both for being here today. Thank you for your presentation, Mr. Shortliffe.
My question is one of clarification. In 2004, some 14 years ago, this committee filed a report on the National Public Alerting System and made recommendations. One of the recommendations was for the CRTC to introduce regulations to ensure that all public and private broadcasters be required to cooperate in the establishment of provincial, territorial and national public warning systems. It was done because, as you have indicated, in 2009, the CRTC informed the public that a new alert system would be implemented by Pelmorex, and then in 2010, Pelmorex launched the National Alert Aggregation and Dissemination System, known as the NAAD System. Now what followed, as I understand, is that that system is based on the Common Alerting Protocol, known as CAP. The NAAD System accepts emergency alerts from authorized government agencies only, and I further understand these alerts are made available in CAP format for broadcasters and other media distributors who voluntarily distribute them to the Canadian public.
Why was it not made mandatory on the part of broadcasters and media distributors to distribute emergency alerts to the Canadian public?
Mr. Shortliffe: Thank you very much for your question, senator. In fact, it has been made mandatory. It was made mandatory in 2014 and 2015. When it was originally launched, it was meant to be voluntary compliance.
Senator McIntyre: Not for the text message alert system, though.
Mr. Shortliffe: Well, for text messages, because we haven’t launched the system yet, but for radio and television broadcasters, it was going to be voluntary compliance.
Senator McIntyre: Both for public and private?
Mr. Shortliffe: Yes. It is now compulsory; all broadcasters must comply with emergency alerting protocols.
Senator McIntyre: Since 2014?
Mr. Shortliffe: Since 2014, that is correct. Compliance with wireless public alerting is also going to be mandatory. The only exception was, unfortunately, in Northern Canada where phones are on mobile satellite. We could not assure that wireless alerts would be geolocated because part of the idea of wireless public alerting is you get an alert that is specific to where you are. If the City of Ottawa were to issue a tornado warning, you would not want to get it if you were in Restigouche. So geolocation is an important part of the wireless public alerting, whether it’s being done at the level of radio and television or on cellphones.
When we looked at Northern Canada, because of the mobile satellite phone technology that is still much used in the North, you could not geolocate, which meant that they were given an exception for the time being. However, the commission is hoping that over the next few years, as it builds out broadband, and it has a broadband plan, as does Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada, it will bring wireless public alerting into the North as well.
For everyone else, for wireless public alerting and for radio and television, it is mandatory.
Senator McIntyre: My next question has to do with text message alert systems. Who will oversee the text message alert system? Public Safety Canada? The provinces and territories? A combination thereof? What role will municipalities play? Could you tell us a bit about the cost associated with implementing the text message alert system?
Also, what role will wireless service providers play in this system? Will all companies participate, or will it be only the three largest companies such as Rogers, Bell and Telus?
Mr. Shortliffe: I’ll take it, if I may, from the back to the front. All wireless service providers must participate with the exception of the mobile service providers in the North. If for some reason they are unable to participate, they could approach the commission and submit what is called a “Part 1 request” to vary that. No one has done that to this date. In fact, all wireless service providers in Canada are going to be required to submit reports. The first one is due May 21 of this year, and for the following May 2019 and May 2020, in which they must report back to the commission on their progress in implementing wireless public alerts, any problems they have had with the system, and assuring that the devices that they are issuing are capable of receiving the alerts. So that speaks to the wireless service providers.
In terms of who can issue the alerts, you have 14 EMOS, emergency management organizations. Environment and Climate Change Canada, which is the federal organization, and then the provinces and territories, each of them is responsible within their own systems devising who is allowed to issue alerts and on what basis.
Under them, you have municipalities, indigenous reserves and a variety of users. There are 988 accounts in Canada that can issue alerts, but they are restricted. If you are a small municipality, you can issue the kind of alert that is appropriate to your geographical area. You could not issue, for example, a nationwide alert or a province-wide alert.
The management of each of these falls within the specific organizations, so Public Safety Canada plays a coordination role with a group called SOREM, Senior Officials Responsible for Emergency Management, who meet to discuss these issues and to try to make sure there is a baseline across the country. But you might have a different hierarchy within one province to another. You may have different permissions within one province to another. They are empowered to decide how they will handle emergency management.
My friends from Pelmorex will be testifying later. They have much more practical experience in the differences from province to province, so they may be able to give you a more fulsome answer to this question.
Senator McIntyre: Thank you.
Senator McPhedran: Welcome. I had a multi-part question responding to your description of the jurisdiction of the CRTC in this regard. As I am understanding it, you’re saying that the CRTC either does not have or does not use authority to establish a consistent national standard when it comes to emergency alerts. Am I correct about that?
Mr. Shortliffe: There are two issues here. There is a consistent technical standard, which the CRTC has established, but it is not establishing a standard for the content of the messages. The CRTC in general does not take a position over the content of messages sent out through telecommunications, so it established a technical standard, called the ATIS standard, which has been adopted for emergency alerting, but it did not adopt a standard for what the content of those messages had to be. That was left for SOREM.
Senator McPhedran: Staying with the jurisdiction the CRTC does have, could you please speak to any specific factoring in of access for the range of Canadians with a range of disabilities?
Mr. Shortliffe: Yes, absolutely. If you don’t mind waiting just one moment because I have some material on this and I want to make sure I give you a fulsome answer.
And I just realized, my apologies, there was a part of Senator McIntyre’s previous question I didn’t answer, which had to do with costing. After I finish your question, Madam Chair, if I may I’ll finish answering Senator McIntyre. My apologies for that, Senator McIntyre.
When the commission made its original decision, it developed an ATIS standard common look and feel guidance document, and it made sure that this ATIS standard would work for blind or partially sighted Canadians; and then it encouraged device manufacturers to have text-to-speech capability. It set a target for wireless service providers to say that at least one accessible alert-capable handset must be available within 12 months of the date of the decision, which is to say that by April 6, 2018, every wireless service provider must offer at least one accessible alert-capable handset.
Some of the wireless service providers, including Bell Mobility, have said that they already have such handsets available for users. The rest will have to report back as part of the May 21 report to the CRTC to confirm that they have offered accessible handsets to Canadians.
Senator McPhedran: Thank you. Staying on the theme of the CRTC jurisdiction around technical standards, would either of these questions fall within the purview of the jurisdiction? What actions are required to send out an alert, and are steps built into the technical standards to guard against the situation where, for example, workers pick the wrong choice of a drop-down menu? The second part of the question is who would actually, figuratively speaking, push the button to release the alert? Is that part of the technical standard set nationally?
Mr. Shortliffe: It is not part of the technical standard that’s set nationally. It is what falls under each individual emergency management organization, and they are then coordinated by SOREM. So it’s not something the CRTC has looked at on a global level.
Because a question was raised about false alerts, the CRTC has said that false messages are the responsibility of the alert issuer. A question was raised from a wireless service provider asking that if a false alert is sent out and we transmit it, are we liable? The commission took the position of saying no, the person who issues the alert is responsible for the contents of that alert. Each emergency management organization, either at the federal level or at the provincial level, is therefore responsible for their procedures to make sure that a false message is not sent out, but the commission has not exerted any jurisdiction there.
Senator McPhedran: The very last part of my question is on the theme of accountability. Given your most recent answer, may I ask what kind of monitoring is there, what kind of reporting back is there to ensure that, for example, providers have actually delivered on the requirement? And what kind of testing is there to see whether what they say is provided is actually viable and useful to those with disabilities?
Mr. Shortliffe: That will actually be part of the test message regime, which is still being considered by the CISC working group, the CRTC interconnection working group, so we don’t yet have a firm answer there. Except that the commission is bearing in mind that we need a test platform, which we want regular reporting back on to ensure that messages are being received as they should be.
I will mention that before the CRTC implemented this they did a test in the Durham and Peel region in I believe 2016 working with Defence Research and Development Canada, which is a subset of the Department of National Defence, to make sure the technology did work and that we would be able to set up a regime where we would be able to get reports back on what kind of messages were received. However, the final test message protocol has not yet been through the commission and hasn’t received a decision yet.
Senator McPhedran: Madam Chair, may I request updated information to this committee once these answers are determined?
The Chair: Certainly.
Senator Richards: This question might have been answered already. What kind of monitoring are the major networks that are to control this going to have in place to stop the circumventing of the system by hackers who want to play with our emotions and send us all running into the woods or something? Can anything be done for this? Is there a system set up to protect that?
Mr. Shortliffe: I’m afraid, senator, I can’t offer a good answer to that question because it falls outside of the CRTC’s responsibility. Because the CRTC is responsible for the telecommunications system, in a sense it has graded the railbed, but putting the rails and the trains on it is the responsibility of the emergency management organizations. They would have protocols to try to make sure that there is no spoofing of messages. Unfortunately, it’s not something I can speak to. I apologize for that, but it’s outside the commission’s responsibility.
Senator Richards: Okay.
[Translation]
Senator Boisvenu: An alert system was implemented a few years ago. I remember that the sound was awful. We had the impression that the announcer was speaking from the bottom of an empty tin can. It was impossible to understand. I was disappointed with the poor quality of the voice system. Do you intend to carry out evaluations strictly on the sound quality of the message as well as the translation? Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think the first messages were translated by Google. It is almost a lack of respect for francophones. Will you perform validation and verification work?
Mr. Shortliffe: The quality of the translation is always an issue. Unfortunately, this is the responsibility of the office that takes care of the emergency messages and not of the CRTC. The standards are different from province to province. The situation has improved on television and radio, but it is not perfect.
This is not our responsibility, and Pelmorex Weather Networks (Television) Inc. is responsible for the broadcast. Fourteen different federal and provincial agencies are involved in the content of the alerts.
Senator Boisvenu: I understand that you are going to implement this system.
Mr. Shortliffe: Yes.
Senator Boisvenu: Can’t you include quality criteria in your call for tenders, if I can put it that way?
Mr. Shortliffe: This is dangerous because the CRTC’s role is not to intervene on the content.
Senator Boisvenu: You already do it with radio in Quebec by requiring that 45 per cent of content be in French.
Mr. Shortliffe: Yes.
Senator Boisvenu: So you have some control. I am trying to understand why you aren’t also doing quality control.
Mr. Shortliffe: We may have requirements for the quota of French content, but not the quality of that content. In this case, it is a telecommunications matter and not a broadcasting one. In telecommunications, our role is to ensure that networks exist, but it is a provincial agency that is responsible for all content.
Senator Boisvenu: Who is responsible for the expenses? The federal government or the provinces?
Mr. Shortliffe: The expenses are shared. For content management, it’s the provincial government. For broadcasting by wireless companies, it is built into their price. The CRTC has ruled that companies like Bell, Rogers, Québecor and others could not ask for more money to provide this service. It is now built into the price of cellphone services.
Senator Boisvenu: I have another question that I am a little concerned about. It has to do with the regulatory process. I was a senior official for 15 years at the Quebec Ministry of the Environment. When it comes time to intervene on the ground, following an alert, the process of federal involvement is very political. It is also very slow, very long. So when there is a disaster, if you bring in the army, for example, and it happens three weeks too late, you amplify the problem. Do you also plan to make improvements to the process to integrate all the actors, during a crisis or disaster, so that the intervention is done in a non-political and, above all, fast way?
Mr. Shortliffe: It is a good question, but with all due respect, this is a question that must be asked of the officials of the agency concerned. In our case, it is more important to ensure that systems are in place and functioning, and that most Canadians are able to receive wireless alerts. Public Safety Canada coordinates the system with the provinces and territories to ensure that all alerts are valid and sent on time. I know there are differences between the provinces. Some provinces issue a lot of alerts for specific situations. Others use the system less. It is a discussion between the provincial, territorial and federal governments. It is the responsibility of the Department of Public Safety and not of our commission.
Senator Boisvenu: The system will address citizens. Once the alert is given, will citizens know where to turn for information and answers if, for example, their safety is in danger? Will the alert let them know where to go for answers?
Mr. Shortliffe: Yes, but it relates to content and content standards. Perhaps my friends from Pelmorex could answer your question more accurately.
[English]
The Chair: Mr. Shortliffe, if you could answer the question that Senator McIntyre had with respect to costing before we go to round two.
Mr. Shortliffe: My apologies, Senator McIntyre. What we said was that wireless service providers did have implementation and operational maintenance costs, but we said you cannot identify these as a separate fee and pass them on to your subscribers.
Now, whether or not that means they will raise fees may be invisible because how fees are raised by wireless service providers is not always completely transparent in a competitive market. But the message the commission said is that we expect you to pass along wireless service alerts as part of your conditions of service. We don’t want you to come up with a bill for it, break that out, and say to every Canadian, “This is how much you’re paying for the system.” They have been asked to absorb it, essentially.
The Chair: Our American colleagues, as I understand the briefing materials, are significantly ahead of us in terms of the text messaging capability.
Mr. Shortliffe: Yes.
The Chair: Given that the United States is equally complex with states and local governments, I’m curious as to why we find ourselves in the position we do, given the advancements in Australia and the United States.
Mr. Shortliffe: That’s a fair question. One thing is we’re benefitting somewhat from the American example. I mentioned earlier the ATIS standard. The ATIS standard was developed in the United States and then adapted for Canada. We saw what issues they had. We also saw what problems they had when they tried to introduce emergency alerting.
The commission decided to put emergency alerting only on LTE networks, which are long-term evolution networks, which are more up-to-date cellphones. It did that because 98.5 per cent of Canadians have access to LTE coverage. It doesn’t mean they actually have an LTE phone. But we saw when the United States tried to cover prior technologies as well it created problems for them.
We have also learned from the United States that they have a lot of jurisdictions as well. It was actually quite startling for me. A few months ago, I attended a meeting organized by Public Safety and others in Montreal. They invited Homeland Security from the United States to come up. I thought they would explain to us how they have had their system working perfectly, and I learned they have all the same problems we have. They have problems with consistency. They have problems in terms of deciding what languages, especially in the southern United States where Spanish is spoken. Certainly we’re somewhat behind them in terms of getting the technology up and running, but we did benefit from that because we learned from their experience. They are experiencing many of the same policy questions we have going forward.
The other thing that was interesting with the U.S. is that because we have adopted an adapted version of the ATIS standard, it means that if you take your Canadian cellphone roaming in the United States, you will receive American alerts. If you are in Florida and there is a tsunami warning, and you have your Canadian cellphone, you will get that tsunami warning. The flip side is that if an American is visiting Canada and there is an avalanche warning, they will receive that. There has been a benefit for us to follow them in terms of the system.
[Translation]
Senator Dagenais: I have a question, but I do not know if it has already been asked. Recently, there have been two alerts in Japan related to missiles from North Korea. It is important to be careful. We know that alarm systems can sometimes activate for no reason. Is there a system that validates a given alert, to confirm that it really is a genuine alert and to avoid spreading panic among the public? Do you have a verification system?
Mr. Shortliffe: Yes and no, because there are two parts to that. The idea is that only valid alerts can use the tone and vibration specific to our alert. Preventing an alert from being issued in error is a matter for specific organizations.
That is one of the reasons we decided to use a banner-based alert found in all cellphones, not just text messages. A person could send a text message stating that there is a fire or a tornado. However, only authorized persons could use the official system.
[English]
The Chair: Could you clarify that for me? Would it be a banner that would come across your phone as opposed to coming in via a text message?
Mr. Shortliffe: That’s right. You cannot turn it off. It’s the same way as when you’re watching television and you get the tone and the alert. It’s on that channel, and you can’t turn it off.
With your cellphone, it won’t matter if you are in an application or watching a video. You will get the banner and the tone, and it will appear on your cellphone. You can’t turn that off.
The only case where it won’t appear is if your cellphone is actually off. If your cellphone is on vibration only, there will a specific vibration that means this is an emergency alert. So you should be able to tell that vibration is separate from one where you’ve received an email.
This is also part of, then, the question about testing and public information to make sure that Canadians are aware of this.
Senator Oh: My apologies. My flight was supposed to be here at 10 a.m. I just arrived.
Mr. Shortliffe: It’s quite all right, sir.
Senator Oh: Sometimes when we were at the border in Niagara Falls or close to the U.S. border, we got this signal coming over to our phone that says we were roaming on a U.S. network. How does that work?
Mr. Shortliffe: The emergency alerting system will be integrated with the American emergency alerting system. If you’re roaming, you would receive emergency alerts that are then appropriate. If you have an alert that crosses the border, you would normally have both the Canadian and the American system alerted.
For example, forest fires can happen on both sides of the border. Presumably, if it was in B.C. and Washington State, both sides would issue an emergency alert. If you were roaming in the United States, if you had just crossed the border, you would get an alert through the American system, but it would look very much like a Canadian alert.
They also have a banner system. It is also involuntary, because we’re using the same standard as they are. We’ve tried to make sure that wherever you are in the United States or Canada, you will receive emergency alerts that are geographically appropriate.
That’s always a big technical issue, making sure that you’re receiving something that is appropriate to your area. You don’t want to get an amber alert from Halifax if you’re living in Vancouver. By the same token, if you have something that has greater application for life and limb, such as an earthquake, it needs to be correctly geolocated.
The United States does that as well. We have 988 issuing authorities. They have thousands who can issue alerts. Again, they’re very specifically geolocated.
In answer to your question, you would receive alerts. Whether you get it from a Canadian or an American alerting agency would depend on which side of the border you’re on and whether you’re roaming or not.
Senator Oh: But there is no charge?
Mr. Shortliffe: There is no charge.
Senator McIntyre: My question is a follow up to Senator Richards’ question as to whether or not an online or a text message alert system would be targeted by hackers or criminals. What measures, if any, have been taken to prevent the system from getting hacked?
Mr. Shortliffe: My apologies, senator. Unfortunately, I can’t answer that question. That would be up to the individual emergency management offices, which are the provinces and Environment and Climate Change Canada. I regret, I simply don’t have that information.
Senator Richards: That means it’s up to the individual provinces. So there is not a standard of benefit for the average Canadian, then, unless we’re all on the same wavelength here. Hackers could hack one part of the country and not another. Is that what you’re saying?
Mr. Shortliffe: No. I’m saying I don’t have that information. Senior Officials Responsible for Emergency Management coordinates the provinces, the territories and the federal bodies, and I know this is one of the issues on their radar screen. It’s simply information I don’t personally have. I’m not saying that that information doesn’t exist, just that I don’t have it.
Senator McIntyre: Would it be possible for the CRTC to provide us with that information?
Mr. Shortliffe: It’s simply information we don’t require. It would be best requested from Public Safety Canada because they are responsible for federal coordination with Senior Officials Responsible for Emergency Management.
Senator McIntyre: So our committee would have to address this question to Public Safety Canada?
Mr. Shortliffe: Yes, I’m afraid so.
Senator McPhedran: Building on these questions, if I could just ask you — and I recognize you can’t offer “an opinion,” but to the extent that you could help us understand the coordination, communication, collaboration and follow up between these two very important federal bodies, CRTC and Public Safety Canada, on this question, this would be very helpful for us to know.
Mr. Shortliffe: Certainly. We’ve set up regular working meetings with Public Safety Canada. They have been very kind to invite us to some meetings of PAWG, the Public Alerting Working Group, which then feeds material into SOREM, which is the higher-level group of senior officials responsible.
We have tried to share with them everything we’re doing, while respecting their authority. I think they have done the same with us. They’ve been very open and transparent with us. While we have two different roles, we want to make sure that we don’t inadvertently create a technical standard that will not allow them to pursue their work and to coordinate with the provinces. From their level, they want to make sure that we’re aware of the issues they face.
I mentioned that I was invited, a few months ago, to a meeting the United States was at. That invitation came from Public Safety Canada. It was enormously helpful for me and my team. I was able to take my whole team from the CRTC there.
We were able to meet with provincial emergency management organizations, and they were able to give us very practical examples — not just with wireless public alerting but with television and radio public alerting — of the challenges they face, which helps inform our work at the commission.
We do have a very strong working relationship with them. It’s just that I need to be very careful about not speaking for them when it’s a scenario that falls under their jurisdiction. But we’ve built a very collaborative working relationship with Public Safety Canada.
Senator McPhedran: Would I be correct in understanding from that answer that there is no agreement or protocol between the bodies, that this is on a case-by-case basis as managers deem appropriate?
Mr. Shortliffe: Yes. We have different responsibilities within the system. Our responsibility was to make sure that there would be wireless public alerting as well as compliance with the radio and television public alerting out there. They have much more of a policy responsibility for the content of the messages; for helping to establish the broadcast immediate list, which is the list of things that need to go out right now because there is a threat to life and limb; and working on governance of the NAAD System, which is the National Alert Aggregation and Dissemination System, with our friends at Pelmorex.
The CRTC said a system needs to be created. Pelmorex needed to reach agreement with the emergency management organizations and SOREM, and then Public Safety Canada is the policy lead in the federal government for actually looking at the content of emergency alerting messages and making sure that the systems are not attacked.
So there’s not a formal entente between them, but we have a clear understanding of our different responsibilities within the system.
Senator Oh: I’m aware that the Singapore government has a special text all-out alert. If they’re looking for somebody under police warrant for arrest or something, they have the picture of the suspect right away on everybody’s cellphone. Do we have such an alert system here?
Mr. Shortliffe: Not to my knowledge, but that would depend on individual alerting authorities. My friends from Pelmorex may know that better than I do. I think that would be a question for individual alerting authorities. As I’ve said, the standards as well as how they use the system are very different from province to province.
Certainly there would be no technical issue with that, although you would then have to decide who could issue those and how they are geolocated. Singapore, which has many wonderful advantages as a city — I visited in my youth and would love to visit again — is, of course, very geographically compact. When you get into province-wide alerts, you have broader questions, so you would have to address who is eligible to do that.
This is really a question that the emergency alerting authorities themselves would be better placed to address than I am.
The Chair: Are there any other questions from senators?
If I may take you back to the American experience of those issues within your mandate as CRTC, what would you say are the number one and two most important lessons to be learned from the American experience? That is my first question.
Second, are there countries you would look to and say, “They’ve learned that lesson, and it’s something we can incorporate as we move forward”?
Mr. Shortliffe: That’s an excellent question. I hope I can give an excellent answer. I suspect I’ll think of an even better answer at 10 o’clock tonight when it’s far too late.
I think what we have learned is that we just need to move forward. Technology is always moving on, and if we wait for the perfect technology and the perfect alerts, we’ll never get there.
Picking the LTE system will reach the vast majority of Canadians, and I think we needed to do that as a reasonable decision. If we had waited and said, “We want a solution that will apply to 100 per cent of Canadians with cellphones,” we might never get there. Maybe five years from now we will learn that there is a new technology and a new evolution we need to proceed.
I think that when life and limb is at stake, we need to accept that we have to have the best system we can reasonably bring in at a given time. We need to be aware that we will have to adjust it as we move forward and that we cannot aspire to ever having the perfect system.
One of the things in Canada that I think we’ve seen in the States is that most emergency alerting authorities have multiple, overlapping ways of alerting people. There will now be wireless cellphones, but there will still be radio and television. And frankly, in a number of emergency alerts, people go and knock on doors because that’s still the best way, if someone is not using their technology, of making sure they’re aware there’s an imminent threat to life and limb.
We in the commission have learned that we need to move forward, adapt to technologies and work with our partners to be aware of what the challenges are but not wait for the perfect solution.
The Chair: I want to take you back to the issue for northern communities. When you talk about the North, you’re referring to the Yukon, the Northwest Territories —
Mr. Shortliffe: Northwest Territories and Nunavut, in particular.
The Chair: What about places like northern Ontario where there are huge gaps in capacity?
Mr. Shortliffe: Yes, that would apply too. Nunavik and Quebec, northern Ontario, parts of northern Saskatchewan and Manitoba. Certainly there are areas that have low geographic density and still do not have great access.
Now, what we’ve seen — and the commission did some work on this — is there’s a huge importance of radio stations in those communities. That was among the many factors that fed into saying that you could no longer opt out of emergency alerts because we realize radio stations are a lifeline for some of those communities.
Over the future, because the commission has committed to broadband as a universal right for Canadians, as it invests more in broadband, and as Innovation, Science and Economic Development invests in broadband, hopefully we will bring more ways for those communities to receive emergency alerts. I think the ideal is that with any community you should have multiple, overlapping ways of receiving alerts.
In the North there is radio and television, which is a good start. I think over the future we want to make sure there are more options for our northern citizens. I’m saying “the North” in terms of northern parts of provinces as well as the various territories.
The Chair: Thank you.
[Translation]
Senator Boisvenu: With regard to warnings related to a military event, given that Canadians and Americans have national defence relations, will this system also be integrated between the two countries?
Mr. Shortliffe: That is a good question, Senator, but unfortunately I can’t answer it.
Senator Boisvenu: Could the Department of Defence answer this question?
Mr. Shortliffe: I believe so. First, it may be a good idea to ask the Public Safety Canada representatives. They have information on the federal emergency approach. Otherwise, the question should be put to the Department of National Defence.
Senator Boisvenu: Is the AMBER alert a parallel system or will it be integrated with it?
Mr. Shortliffe: Yes, it’s integrated. There are instant alerts, including the AMBER alert.
Senator Boisvenu: Right. Thank you.
[English]
Senator McIntyre: Perhaps one final question. I want to go back to the April 2017 directives by the CRTC.
As you’ve explained, Mr. Shortliffe, in April 2017, the CRTC directed all wireless service providers to implement wireless public alerting capability on their LTE networks by April of this year, April 2018. However, this does not mean that Canadians can expect to receive emergency alerts as of April of this year.
Given that situation, do you think the CRTC should go a step further and introduce further regulations in order to force the parties to make sure that Canadians in fact receive emergency alerts as of April 2018?
Mr. Shortliffe: Well, as I said at the beginning, in fact, I think the issue is more that the commission needs to consider the reports it asked for from the Interconnection Steering Committee.
My understanding from wireless service providers is they will all be ready to go by April 6. We have not received any interventions from anyone yet saying that they need an extension of time. So the question is more that the commission needs to consider the reports it has received, consider whether it has an adequate plan and then issue its decision. I can’t give you a firm date for when that decision will be issued because the commission never says until the decision is ready to issue. At the moment, that is the issue that we need to look at, not the capability of the wireless service providers to be part of the system.
I will say — and this is just a personal comment — we obviously work a lot with wireless service providers. They all seem to have worked very effectively on this file. They all understand the importance of emergencies.
Senator McIntyre: I don’t want to push my question any further than I have to, but what will the CRTC do if the system is not operational by April 2018?
Mr. Shortliffe: If the date passes and the commission had actually said, “Yes, we are ready for the system to launch,” and then it does not launch effectively, that’s one of the reasons why we’re requiring our first reports in May 2018. Should people be in non-compliance, without getting specific, the commission has a wide range of tools to assure compliance with regulatory orders.
Senator McIntyre: What tools?
Mr. Shortliffe: I will now actually defer to my legal colleague.
Senator McIntyre: Let’s hear about the tools.
Rachelle Frenette, Acting General Counsel and Deputy Executive Director, Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission: There a number of compliance mechanisms set out in our act, under both the Telecommunications Act, under which we regulate wireless service providers, and the Broadcasting Act, under which we regulate radio-television and television distributors.
It’s difficult to answer a hypothetical question, but the commission does indeed have a number of regulatory tools to ensure compliance, which goes to examining specific holders of their licences under the Broadcasting Act and bringing them to a particular hearing to answer questions. Under the Telecommunications Act, we have a number of regulatory tools at our disposal, such as administrative monetary penalties that we can levy once there is a finding of non-compliance. There are a number of other examples, but I would rather limit myself to those particular instances.
The Chair: Let me take the opportunity to thank our witnesses. Mr. Shortliffe,Ms. Frenette, thank you very much for joining us and for answering our questions.
In our second panel today we welcome, from Pelmorex Weather Networks (Television) Inc, Mr. Paul Temple, Senior Vice-President, Strategic & Regulatory Affairs; and Mr. Martin Bélanger, Director of Public Alerting.
Mr. Temple and Mr. Bélanger, we invite you to make any opening remarks you may have, after which we will have questions for you. Welcome.
Paul Temple, Senior Vice-President, Strategic & Regulatory Affairs, Pelmorex Weather Networks (Television) Inc.: Thank you for including us.
Just a few brief remarks. As mentioned, my name is Paul Temple and I work at Pelmorex Weather Networks Inc., which is the parent company of the Weather Network and MétéoMédia, popular television and digital media services.
Among my responsibilities is oversight of our public alerting operations, and in particular our National Alert Aggregation and Dissemination System, or more conveniently, the NAAD system.
With me is my colleague Martin Bélanger.
[Translation]
Martin Bélanger, Director, Public Alerting, Pelmorex Weather Networks (Television) Inc.: Good afternoon. My name is Martin Bélanger. I am the Director of Public Alerting with Pelmorex. My responsibilities are focused on managing and operating the national alert aggregation and dissemination system, commonly known as the NAAD system.
[English]
Mr. Temple: One aspect of our public alerting activities that was not addressed in our briefing notes to you was the governance. The Weather Network and MétéoMédia specialty television services are regulated by the CRTC. Many of our conditions of licence set by the CRTC deal with our public alerting activities.
In addition, we have a governance council composed of representatives from each of the provinces and territories as well as the federal government. Representatives from television, radio, cable, satellite and the wireless sectors also sit on the governance council. The governance council provides us direction and guidance on a number of public alerting related matters.
I hope this brief introduction is helpful. We look forward to your questions.
[Translation]
Senator Dagenais: Thank you to our guests for being here. You provide an alert service for government agencies, and others. It is necessary to be careful, because such a service can sometimes issue false alerts. As I mentioned to previous witnesses, in Japan there were false alerts made recently related to the launch of missiles from North Korea.
Can you guarantee that an alert is validated when it is launched or do you have the means to validate your alert system before a message is broadcast? We know that a false alert can have dramatic consequences for the entire population.
[English]
Mr. Temple: That’s a good question to start with.
There are a couple of ways that a false alarm could be activated. One is that there is some kind of breach of security or possibly mischief on behalf of an issuing authority, and in that case we don’t really have much control. If an employee of a provincial emergency management operation decided to send a blatantly false alert, we wouldn’t be able to do anything about it, or if their system is breached there is not much we can do about it.
However, we certainly take security very seriously in the network that we provide. We’re currently finishing our second audit. We brought in security analysts, third-party independent analysts, to look at our system and make any recommendations for security. We take that very seriously.
The final place where an alert could possibly be compromised would be where it is being received and then passed on by a radio station or a wireless operator. There again, we can’t control the security of their facilities, but we certainly take measures to safeguard our own system, and we spend a lot of time and effort on that.
The second part was whether we do anything about something that is blatantly inaccurate. To understand our system, it’s very much based on technical rules, profiles and protocols. Actually, it’s designed so that there is no human intervention. When an alert is submitted by an authority, unless they are not following the technical protocols, it goes through without any human intervention in a matter of seconds. An example is recently the Province of British Columbia issued a tsunami alert. They created the message themselves on our platform, but once they approved that message it was sent through in three seconds. No one is sitting and reading alerts because, first, if it’s a threat to life and property it has to go out quickly. It’s not our role to be second-guessing. We shouldn’t be in a position where we would be saying, “Well, does Environment Canada really want to send that tornado warning?” or “Should Quebec really send that amber alert?” That is not our job. Our job is to take the messages that they deem as critical to the public and pass them on quickly.
We don’t have the capability to determine whether an alert is appropriate or misguided or inaccurate. It’s really the issuing authority’s responsibility.
Senator Oh: Do we have a nationwide emergency command centre that covers the whole country?
Mr. Temple: As I understand it, the emergency alerting responsibility typically resides with the provincial emergency management groups. We have our own operation centres. We actually have more than one because we want to make sure we’re fully redundant. If there was some kind of catastrophic disaster somewhere, we don’t want the system to fail, so we actually have duplicate facilities, geographically remote from each other, so that if there is a failure at one we would still be able to operate our system. For our own system, we have one management team that is overseeing it, but our facilities are actually distributed geographically. At the government level, I’m not aware, but that might be something Public Safety could address.
Senator Oh: Don’t you think it’s important to have a major command centre and then you have cells across the country?
Mr. Temple: You get into the issue of jurisdiction and our wonderful Confederation. I’m not sure whether the provinces would like a control centre in Ottawa telling them what alerts to issue, but I’m going to stay away from that and stick to my knitting.
Senator McIntyre: Thank you, gentlemen, for being present and answering our questions on this important topic.
What role do municipal, provincial and federal officials play in the National Public Alerting System? How do they ensure they coordinate with each other and with the private sector?
Mr. Temple: In the case of the NAAD centre, we have formal agreements with every province. In those agreements, each province has overall responsibility within their province to determine who has access to the alerting system, for what areas and for what types of alerts. If it’s New Brunswick, we’ll sit down with New Brunswick and set up their accounts so that they can issue any kind of alert for New Brunswick. Once we set that up, it’s up to the emergency management office in New Brunswick to decide how they want it to operate in their province. It’s not our job to tell New Brunswick or Quebec how to run public alerting in their province. We give them the tools and the flexibility.
As an example, in Ontario, one of the first things the Ontario government did was set up accounts for the Ontario Provincial Police to allow them to issue amber alerts. But that was the Ontario government’s decision. It wasn’t ours. It’s not our job to tell Ontario how to run things. They decided that the OPP would have authority to issue amber alerts, but our system is flexible enough that the OPP can only issue amber alerts and they can’t issue any other kind of alert. They can only issue amber alerts for the areas of Ontario that the Ontario government has decided. That’s one approach.
In Saskatchewan they have the same flexibility. It’s the same agreement we have, but they have taken a different approach. In Saskatchewan they have actually trained and authorized hundreds of users at the municipal level to issue alerts. But, again, the Saskatchewan government decides who can issue alerts and for what area. This is just a hypothetical, but they might decide that the emergency management officer in Saskatoon can issue alerts, but they can decide that he or she can only issue alerts for Saskatoon and only certain types of alerts, but that’s completely in their control. We give them the tools so that each province can finesse the system that best meets their needs. They ultimately have the control.
That’s maybe a long way of answering your question. I hope that is helpful.
Senator McIntyre: Yes. As you have indicated in your brief, the successful implementation of a national wireless public alerting service is dependent on all parties working together — federal, provincial, territorial authorities, Pelmorex and all wireless service providers. It is, therefore, important that an effective awareness campaign take place.
What awareness initiatives are currently in place to ensure that the Canadian public and the Canadian industry understand the current alert system and use it to maximum effect?
Mr. Temple: Again, good question. It is very important because it is going to be so new to people. One of the things that we are undertaking is that Pelmorex, as part of our CRTC licence, is spending probably within the neighbourhood of about $800,000 over the next several months to develop and execute a media campaign.
As I mentioned, we have a governance council, and we have set a working group of marketing and communications people from some of the provinces and broadcasters and wireless companies. They are assisting us in putting together a media campaign. That is going to be very much focused on digital media and mobile ads. It’s really directed to the millennials who have these things. That’s going to be one of the best ways. We are going to have television and radio ads as well.
If you go to a website, you could see ads or they may pop up on your phone to try to reach people and make sure they are aware of the fact that wireless alerts will be starting soon. We also have a website that we operate, alertready.ca and onalert.ca, to provide a whole bunch of information on who issues alerts, why they are issued, many of the questions that we probably get today.
The commission before us was talking about certain types of phones. We’re going to have information with links to each of the phone companies. If you have a Bell mobile phone, you’ll be able to go to the website and then go to a link where you can find out whether your phone is one of the ones that will get these alerts. We’re trying to do that awareness campaign and then encourage people to go to the website where they can get a lot more information.
Senator McIntyre: That’s the technical implementation that you are addressing?
Mr. Temple: Exactly. Subject to the commission giving the go-ahead for April 6 — hopefully, it’s April 6 because we’re all getting ready for April 6. When you’re producing ads, if we can say it is starting April 6, it’s much more effective.
Whenever it is, we’re hoping to start those ads sometime in the middle of March so that we have several weeks to create awareness, and then the campaign will continue on through Emergency Preparedness Week, which is the first week of May, and then probably into the early summer.
Senator McPhedran: Thanks for being here. I am very mindful of the distinction you have drawn between the platform, for which you’re responsible, and the content of alerts, for which you’re not responsible. I would like to delve into this more deeply and look at the role or architecture of the platform, and perhaps this is a question about limitations.
I have some fairly deep roots on Vancouver Island. I have had information back from the tsunami alert, and there is a recurring theme, which is that the information available in the alerts didn’t tell people what to do and where to go. Of course, depending on what is coming in from the ocean, there are different responses that one should make if one is trying to seek safety.
In terms of the platform, you have already outlined that only certain devices will help save lives, that all kinds of folks who perhaps are not millenials will think, perhaps, that they do have a device that is going to save their life and they don’t.
In your description, I have to say that to my ears, there was a lot of shifting of onus to consumers, to the public. Has there been a thorough examination of all possible ways to, for example, make all devices capable of helping to save lives? Is it something to do with the platform that in the situation for folks, for example, in Tofino, people had relatively little information as to what they actually should be doing to save their lives?
Mr. Temple: Well, I’ll talk about the content and the instructions because I’m sure if there was a public alerting authority here, they would probably say — it’s always dangerous to talk on someone else’s behalf — that the time of the emergency is maybe not the best time to teach people what to do. They would probably say that has to be done beforehand.
We have tried to make our system as flexible as possible. Martin will kick me if I’m making something up, but they can include a URL. For instance, they could indicate the nature or type of emergency and then include a URL so people could go and get information specific to their needs.
Our system allows for an issuer to include images, pictures and diagrams. If they wanted to include an evacuation route, or something of that nature, our system will support that. Whether they are able to do that is a different issue, but we can support those enhancements that would perhaps provide additional information to the people in harm’s way.
That’s the content question because it really goes to whether they are adequately informed. I can only pass on what I’m being given; so if they are not being adequately informed as to what to do, there is not much I can do to remedy that, other than to give the issuer tools to address it.
Senator McPhedran: I’d like to seek clarification so that we’re all thinking along the same lines. If I’m hearing you correctly, what you’re saying is that there is no feedback loop between those who manage the platform and those who manage the content.
If someone managing the platform were to see that something crucial was missing in the content, if I have heard you correctly, you have just told us there’s nothing that the platform managers can do?
Mr. Temple: Well, because that alert went out in three seconds.
Senator McPhedran: But there are subsequent alerts that could go out. There are clarifications, are there not? You only get one and that’s it?
Mr. Temple: No. The authority can issue as many alerts as they want, but if we’re 5,000 or 3,000 miles away, we have an operator who is making sure that the platform is working perfectly, but they are not there reading the alert and saying, “I wonder if the people on Vancouver Island know what to do.” They wouldn’t have the faintest idea.
Senator McPhedran: So there is no feedback loop between the two?
Mr. Temple: Well, what typically happens is we will get feedback from — we have the website and social media. We get feedback after the fact, and we’re always happy to pass that on, and we discuss those issues at our council meeting. But within the time frame of the actual alert, there is nothing we can do. I presume the issuers are getting a lot more feedback a lot faster than we would on whether their information was complete or inadequate.
It’s not our responsibility to monitor the effectiveness of their alerts. We certainly will pass on comments, and we have in the past. That’s one of the things that we do at the council.
I can only speak to the broadcasting system, because that’s what has been operating for the last couple of years. We haven’t launched the wireless system yet.
I’ll give you a good example. I think one of the senators mentioned the poor quality of the audio. That is the responsibility of the local broadcaster. So what happened initially is that a variety of text-to-speech systems were used, primarily because the issuing authority would only put text in. We allow them to put an audio file or whatever they want in, but they were only putting text in. When you get to a radio station, text isn’t very useful, so they had text-to-speech systems.
There were a lot of complaints, so ultimately we put in a centralized text-to-speech system of a much better quality to try and address those concerns. That was a process that evolved over a couple of years where we kept getting negative feedback on the poor quality of the audio. The broadcasters didn’t seem to be in a position to remedy it, and it made more sense for us to step up and do that, so we did.
Senator McPhedran: Thank you for allowing me to interrupt your answer. I’m now very interested in the next part of your answer in terms of devices.
Mr. Temple: The system is, as I mentioned, very much based on standards and technical profiles and what not. So what is coming out of our data feeds — we have data feeds. We have feeds on the satellite. We have them available through the Internet. I won’t get into all the technical stuff, but they are open. Anyone can access them.
Because it’s based on standards, you know exactly what you’re going to get. The analogy I use is that it’s like addressing an envelope. Everyone knows it’s Mr. and Mrs. so-and-so, and then the street and the province and the country and the postal code. Well, the formatting of our alert messages are similar in that concept. They are structured, and you know that there is going to be a certain part that tells you where the alert is for and it tells you who issued it and what time and what the actual message is. There are all sorts of things.
Anyone really now could take those feeds and develop any type of alerting service they want. A perfect example is in our own company. The Weather Network, just like any other broadcaster or someone else, actually takes the alerting feed and we integrate it into our Weather Network and MétéoMédia phone apps, so if you have our weather app and there was a warning in Kamloops, you’ll get it on your phone now.
Now that’s a smartphone app, not — it’s optional. If you don’t want the Weather Network or if you don’t want notifications, you’re not going to get it. But there is nothing that prevents anyone from — we know Google takes our feed. They could provide notices to people. You could provide it to a siren in a remote location.
It’s really quite a flexible system because it’s based on technical standards. If some smart guy in Brandon, Manitoba, wanted to do a little bit of software and have a siren go off when a tornado warning is coming, they can do that.
Senator McPhedran: Thank you. My question was a little different from your answer. My question was geared to the wide range of devices that are out there and the fact that many people may be under the impression that because they have a so-called smartphone they will be covered through this potential lifesaving system.
I think we heard from you that that is definitely not going to be the case, that there will be, in fact, a limited number of devices that will be capable of conveying these messages of life or death. So my question was asking for some better understanding of the extent to which your working group, your collaboration, your industry is proceeding on this in terms of the platform, that linkage, that critical linkage between the platform, the content and the devices.
Are you satisfied? Can you tell us today that the widest possible extension of messaging into the widest possible range of devices has already been explored and that what is rolling out for the Canadian public is the widest possible coverage?
Mr. Temple: My apologies. Earlier when you said devices I took it in a general way, not just limited to mobile devices. Hence my rambling reply.
To be honest, my understanding is that the — well, I shouldn’t speak on behalf of — to be perfectly clear, we don’t know, because we don’t operate wireless phone systems, how many devices. That’s really something you have to ask the wireless companies, because we have no idea what kind of phones they have sold and who has them. That answer I think you’ll only get from the actual Bells and Rogers and Teluses. We don’t know.
I think there was some — in the hearing, did they indicate how many they thought? Even that, they don’t like talking about it because they treat it as commercially sensitive information. Bell doesn’t want to tell Rogers how many. So I don’t know who would know that, but certainly the wireless carriers would know it. We don’t know which phones.
In terms of the communications, however, as I said, we are trying as part of our awareness campaign to create awareness so that people understand that not every phone is going to get it and that there is a way for them to find out whether their phone will be able to receive the alerts.
Senator McPhedran: Just a quick last question. Those responsible for designing the platform have designed and are implementing the platform without in fact knowing the extent to which the platform can be used?
Mr. Temple: And by platform you’re talking about the system we operate?
Senator McPhedran: You used the term “platform,” so I’m using your term.
Mr. Temple: We have designed the platform based on industry specifications to allow those types of phones — I think the commission was talking about it earlier, LTE phones — to be able to receive the alerts. How many of those phones exist is privy to the wireless companies.
Senator McPhedran: Thank you.
Mr. Temple: I think the understanding is that over time almost all phones will be of that type, but what portion is right now, I couldn’t tell you; only the carriers could.
[Translation]
Senator Boisvenu: I have a few questions for you in connection with the ones I asked the previous witnesses. You tested the system between 2014 and 2017, and I know that the experience has been heavily criticized for the quality of the messages. During the first alerts, the messages were so incomprehensible that they scared more than they helped.
Do you have a system to check the quality of these messages? Could there not be a way to receive feedback from the public to see if they have understood the message? Will a quality control system be put in place?
[English]
Mr. Temple: Yes, specifically on the audio, because I think the biggest complaint was with the audio. What we have done, as I mentioned, is implement centralized text to speech. Because the alerts have to go through so quickly and there’s no time for people to sit around necessarily and create an audio file, we put in a centralized system such that while the message is being typed in, we will create an audio version and let the issuer listen to it.
Our system will literally, once they’ve finished their message, within a few seconds give them back an audio version that they can listen to. So they can now listen to the audio before it goes.
Text to speech is wonderful, but if there’s no space between two words, it thinks it’s one long word. If there’s no period after a sentence— it’s a machine — it just thinks it’s one long, big system. I mentioned the OPP. If you put in “OPP,” it thinks it’s “op.” It doesn’t know its initials.
So we put in this system that allows the issuer to hear the audio so that they can make any corrections. If there’s a spelling mistake or anything, they can make a correction quickly. We also allowed them to customize the lexicon so that they can go in and change the software so that place names are properly pronounced.
The Province of Quebec, as an example, has gone through and customized to make sure that place names are properly pronounced the way a Quebecer would expect to hear it, and the same case with Ontario. Most of the provinces have customized place name pronunciations because, for example, it doesn’t know how to pronounce Pentanguishene. It has to be taught. That’s something the province does, not us, because I don’t know how to pronounce some of the place names in Saskatchewan, and I assure you that you wouldn’t want me pronouncing Quebec place names. Martin can. But that’s the responsibility of the province.
I think we’re talking about feedback, and that’s a place where we received feedback over time and implemented enhancements to the system.
Hopefully the feedback that we’re getting from the provinces now is that the quality of the audio is much better. I can’t speak to the quality of translations because, again, it’s up to the issuing authority.
Senator Boisvenu: But they will be able to correct it?
Mr. Temple: Yes.
[Translation]
Senator Boisvenu: I read the document you gave us about integrated systems. When I looked at the statistics, I was trying to understand why the number of alerts in Saskatchewan and Manitoba was higher — almost 4,000 alerts — than in almost every other province combined. Is there a cultural or geographic feature that explains the large number of alerts in this region compared to other places in Canada?
[English]
Mr. Temple: Some of the provinces have been very engaged in public alerting. Again, it boils down to a decision by each province. Some provinces want to centralize alerting; others see it more as an opportunity to have first responders at each location take responsibility.
It’s just very much a decision, and I think in the case of Saskatchewan they’ve really pushed responsibility down. However, my understanding is most of the Saskatchewan alerts at the moment are still not alerts that would trigger a broadcast, so they have training wheels on. The municipalities can issue alert types that would not interrupt the broadcast but are still useful to know because the alerting feed is really like a news feed. It can go into a news room. It doesn’t have to interrupt a broadcast. You can see from the number of alerts that go through in the tables that we sent. That information can go into news rooms; it can go into automated systems that pass information on through a phone app. If you want to know when a frost warning is being issued, you can write simple software that will let you know when frost warnings are going to be issued, but it’s not going to necessarily interrupt broadcasts or force a message on a phone. Those are reserved only for threat to life.
In the case of Saskatchewan, I hate to speak on other people’s behalf, but our understanding is they want their issuers at the municipal level to be familiar with the system. But they’re still keeping oversight on the most serious alerts.
[Translation]
Mr. Bélanger: I would like to add a comment. Some provinces are centralized, while others are decentralized, such as Saskatchewan. Some provinces also decide the type of alerts that will be issued. One province may only issue an emergency alert — as in the case of an AMBER alert — while another, like Saskatchewan, may issue a few hundred different types of alerts. The majority of alerts are not designed for emergency situations.
The difference in numbers between provinces may also depend on the type of alert or the situation in which provinces have to send a message to the public.
Senator Dagenais: Someone said that the decision to broadcast a particular alert may belong to the provinces or municipalities. We saw it in 2016, with the Ontario Provincial Police.
The choice of the type of alert to be issued and the way it will be issued is up to several people. It was also mentioned that there may be a problem with the translation or with the choice of language in which the alert will be issued, depending on the province. Doesn’t all this make your agency more vulnerable?
[English]
Mr. Temple: I don’t think it makes it more vulnerable, but it places the responsibility with the province. We don’t restrict, as I mentioned. We have a master agreement with the province and we set up a master account, for lack of a better word. After that, it’s up to them to police who they give access to.
So I would hope that they only provide access to people who are properly trained not only on how to use our system but also on the criteria or familiarity with whatever policies and procedures that province has in place.
Our agreement basically says that the province is responsible for its users. Again, it certainly is not my job to tell Saskatchewan whether Joe Blow should have access or not. That has to be the province’s responsibility. I can give them the tools to set up the types of accounts they need and to put in policies that restrict or constrain certain types of alerts, but it’s really ultimately up to them.
Senator Richards: Thank you for coming. This is just a provincial observation from New Brunswick. It is the provinces that issue these alerts, is it? It’s not federal? It might be better if there was a federal oversight.
You have here the chemical hazard and threat to life alert issued. You have seven chemical hazards in New Brunswick. I would imagine those were chemical spills, and I would imagine they wouldn’t be province-wide, would they, like Saint John or somewhere like that? Is that a province-wide alert, or is it localized to where the spill would have occurred?
Mr. Temple: Actually, those alerts were issued by the province during the power outage. They were in response to people who were using barbecues and other artificial —
Senator Richards: During the ice storm. So it’s a different kind of thing.
Mr. Temple: They were trying to warn people, “Don’t take the barbecue inside” because there were several deaths. The number of alerts was simply because they were repeating that message. If you issued the message on Tuesday, the ice storm power was still out, so they reissued it on Wednesday and several times as a reminder to people because they were trying to head that off. Those were the only —
Mr. Bélanger: Correct, that was only for the ice storm.
Senator Richards: Okay. I guess what caught me here was chemical hazards, and I was thinking of a spill or something local. Thank you.
Senator McIntyre: Supplementary to Senator Richards’ question, Mr. Temple, looking at Table 2 of your brief, I note that the threat to life alerts were issued through the NAAD System. Was there input from the provinces regarding the threat to life alerts?
Mr. Temple: Yes. Of those threat to life alerts, you’re looking at which table? Table 2?
Senator McIntyre: Table 2.
Mr. Temple: So 1,103 were issued by Environment Canada, but the balance were all issued by the respective provinces there. Manitoba issued 3; New Brunswick, 8; Ontario has issued 58; Quebec has issued 8; and Saskatchewan, 8. Those were all issued by the provincial authorities.
Senator McIntyre: I note that the current alert system in Canada includes an online component, but where are online alerts posted? Are they available on the Public Safety Canada website, provincial emergency services websites or both?
Mr. Temple: As I mentioned, the output of our alerting feed is standard, so anyone can take the feed and put them on their own website.
In the case of the Weather Network and MétéoMédia, we publish every alert that goes through the system. So if you go to theweathernetwork.com or meteomedia.com, you will find any alert.
I can’t speak for others, but I think probably most of the provinces post their own alerts. I’m not aware of a single federal source. Environment Canada publishes all their own alerts, but I don’t think they publish alerts from other jurisdictions. The Weather Network and MétéoMédia publish everything on our website.
Senator McIntyre: Perhaps a final question. As a matter of clarification, gentlemen, as I understand it, by April of this year, April 2018, wireless service providers will be required to send alerts. Or will the system be optional?
Mr. Temple: No, I don’t think the system will be optional. I think, based on the commission, the panel before us, they have to review and approve some reports still from the CISC group. And assuming that those reports are acceptable to the commission, then my understanding is, unless they change the date, it will be April 6. We’ll be ready for April 6, but whether it’s mandatory on April 6 will depend on the commission approving those two reports.
Senator McIntyre: With that said, I want to make an observation. I trust and I hope that wireless customers will not have to register for the alert system and that they will automatically receive alerts for incidents that affect them. I think this is crucial and important, because otherwise, in case of a threat, we’ll have a national crisis.
Mr. Temple: Well, they won’t have to register for them. The only issue is by what date it will start. Is it April 6? But they won’t have to register. That’s for certain. It’s just a matter of whether it’s April 6 or whatever date the commission finalizes.
I really hope it’s April 6 because, as I mentioned, we’re developing a media campaign now, and we need to know how to set it up. We’d like to be able to say “starting April 6,” and I don’t want to say on a TV ad “starting April 6” and it’s April 15.
Senator McIntyre: Let me put it this way: If the system is not operational by the end of April, our committee will make sure that they’re on their toes.
The Chair: If I can ask a final question, unless others have any, you made reference to bringing in third-party auditors who took a look at your work. Could you share with the committee the one or two things that you learned and that you’ve implemented as a result of that?
Mr. Temple: The most recent report isn’t finalized. We’re actually still going through that.
The one prior to that, I think if I told you, none of us would understand what it means. They get into servers and I’m lost. But I can tell you there was nothing of significant concern. They kind of graded things as green, yellow and red. I don’t think there were any reds, but they had some recommendations for some things we could improve on, which we did right away.
We report that to our governance council. Again, we report it in a way that — we don’t want detailed schematics of our system floating around, but we brief them at a high level as to what was recommended. The auditors came in and spoke to the council, so it wasn’t just us talking to them, and we plan to do the same thing on this audit. We’ll have the auditors come in and talk directly to the members of the council at a high level, what they found and whether we’ve remedied any concerns they have.
The Chair: That would be your check and balance, the governance council being reassured through that process?
Mr. Temple: Exactly.
The Chair: Thank you. Any other questions, senators?
Mr. Temple and Mr. Bélanger, thank you very much for joining us. We’re very grateful for the information you’ve shared.
Mr. Temple: Thank you for including us.
The Chair: Before we suspend, senators, we have one motion we’d like to deal with, and then we’ll move to in camera. Senator Dagenais, you have the motion?
[Translation]
Senator Dagenais: It is the motion concerning the Subcommittee on Veterans Affairs:
That the membership of the Subcommittee on Veterans Affairs be as follows: the Honourable Senators Boniface, Dagenais, Day, Jaffer, McIntyre and Richards, three of whom shall constitute a quorum.
[English]
The Chair: Is it agreed, senators?
Hon. Senators: Agreed.
The Chair: We will suspend for two minutes to go in camera.
(The committee continued in camera.)