# CRTC stalls emergency warning system for five years ... ?



## bossi (18 Jan 2005)

Can you imagine how much poop would hit the fan if a disaster such as the tsunami hit Canada ... and it became public knowledge that the CRTC had willfully and deliberately stalled an emergency warning system ... for five years ... ?  Only in Canada, eh?  Pity ...

*Disaster warnings may come to TV
Proposal would beam alerts in Canada

CRTC has stalled scheme for 5 years*
Peter Calamai, Science Reporter (The Star)

OTTAWAâ â€For less than 10 cents a month, government warnings of impending disasters â â€ natural, technological or even terrorist â â€ could be instantly beamed onto every TV channel in Canadian homes that use cable or satellite.

But objections by the federal broadcast regulator have stalled the warning system for about five years, although federal and provincial governments and public safety officials back the proposal. 

A disaster warning system has been active on all TV channels in the U.S. for three decades.

The regulator, the Canadian Radio-television and Communications Commission (CRTC), is currently weighing a revised warning proposal submitted in November by Pelmorex Inc., a Mississauga company that operates The Weather Network and its French counterpart, MétéoMédia. 

"It's tragic that Canadians aren't being as well informed about natural hazards and other dangers as they could be," said Gordon McBean of the Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction at the University of Western Ontario in London.

The proposed system would flash a warning across the bottom of the TV screen on every channel within two or three minutes of any government agency alerting Pelmorex. 

While most of the warnings are expected to be for ice storms, tornadoes and other severe weather, plans call for the system to also be used for other threats like forest fires, leaking tank cars and even terrorist attacks.

Initially the warnings would be beamed to every subscriber in a particular cable system but experts say continued growth of digital cable and satellite â â€ now reaching more than four million Canadian homes â â€ would eventually allow fine-tuning to neighbourhoods and even individual streets.

The CRTC rejected a 1999 Pelmorex proposal largely because it didn't hook up to digital cable or satellite systems, the same limitation as the existing U.S. warning system. The regulator also criticized Pelmorex's proposed monthly fee of 13 cents as too high and said visually impaired TV watchers needed special help.

Pelmorex vice-president Paul Temple told the Star the company had dealt with all these objections in its revised proposal and the fee would add less than a dollar a year to subscribers' bills.

Pelmorex has developed new technology so the warning system connects with satellite and digital cable and not simply old-fashioned analog cable as in the original proposal. A recording will now play as the warning crawled across the screen to alert everyone but especially those visually impaired or with reading problems.

With fewer than one in five Canadian households now getting their TV signals via antenna, the bulk of the country would be covered by the proposed All Channel Alert system. 

But disaster experts also favour automated phone alerts in special circumstances, such as radiation accidents at nuclear power stations.


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## Gunnar (18 Jan 2005)

Yeah, the Liberals would go right out and spend millions of dollars on developing a plan for an over the top emergency system that wouldn't be implemented either, but would get completely lost in meetings and planning sessions.  Then, they'd open up a Royal Commission on whose responsibility it was to see that there was an early warning system.  The results would take two years to untangle, the media would get bored with it, a few faceless bureaucrats would be crucified, then an election would happen where everyone would vote Liberal because of all the concern they'd shown in getting to the bottom of things.

Of course, I could be wrong...


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## FredDaHead (19 Jan 2005)

Excuse my (possibly) leftist/socialist bias in this, but basically, this plan would mean middle-to-high class people would get warnings, and people who can't afford cable (or those who don't want it) wouldn't. Although most people do have cable or satellite, it's not a reason to exclude those who don't from being warned in the event of an emergency. Would we prevent one in five Canadians from showing up to a hospital when they're hurt or sick, or from having a fire truck go to their house if it's on fire?

Anyways, I do agree the CRTC is stupid, but it's run by the liberals...


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## Fruss (19 Jan 2005)

Frederik G said:
			
		

> Excuse my (possibly) leftist/socialist bias in this, but basically, this plan would mean middle-to-high class people would get warnings, and people who can't afford cable (or those who don't want it) wouldn't. Although most people do have cable or satellite, it's not a reason to exclude those who don't from being warned in the event of an emergency. Would we prevent one in five Canadians from showing up to a hospital when they're hurt or sick, or from having a fire truck go to their house if it's on fire?
> Anyways, I do agree the CRTC is stupid, but it's run by the liberals...



The problem is that the signal sent to the air is much harder for that company to modify..  they would have to get a free access to EVERY TV station in Canada that send analog signal into the air to modify their signal as they want..  Almost impossible to do...

To resolve that, it would be the responsability of the TV station to put an alert on their signal as soon as they know an alert has been sent out...

Frank


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## pbi (19 Jan 2005)

Here is some related comment. In the run-up to Op ABACUS in LFCA, we were working on the communications piece, in particular how we might alert reservists for duty. During the research for this, I was very shocked to discover that there was at that time no such thing as an "Emergency Broadcasting System" in Ontario and probably not one in Canada. In other words, there was no coordinated plan to be able to pass warnings to the public in the event of an emergency, other than getting each individual media outlet to agree individually to run the message text or the spoken alert. As it was we never had to rely on it. I wonder what has been done? Anything?

On the positive side, a few years later, in 38 CBG, we were able to use local media to great effect in calling up our Res soldiers in response to Op PEREGRINE, which required us to rapidly generate and deploy formed companies. As well as informing the soldiers, these announcements also helped to inform employers and schools that Reservists were being asked to volunteer, thereby contributing to the response we got: we had more names than we could deploy.So the "fall back" can work in some cases.

Cheers.


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## a_majoor (19 Jan 2005)

One first cut at OP ABACUS was the suggestion that every reservist be kitted out and sitting on their rucks in the armouries by 11:59 31 Dec 1999.......

To say that a signalling system is ineffective or improper because not everyone will be able to recieve it (for whatever reason) is silly, IMO. If I am not watching TV, I won't recieve this either. Does this mean the government should issue every citizen a strap on radio reciever so thay can broadcast warnings? If they do, will there be a department of battery management to ensure the recievers are always charged up? How about a department of volume control to make sure you have the reciever turned up to high volume when you are asleep? 

By all means, put in an alert system. If 3 out of 5 people can get the warning, then they have a better chance to react, and can either warn their neighbours, or are available to help with the recovery afterwards!


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## Goober (19 Jan 2005)

The stall is not all bad, it sent Pelmorex Inc. back to R&D and they developed a system that now can be broadcast on digital cable and satelite systems, as well as analog systems.


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## bossi (20 Jan 2005)

Goober said:
			
		

> The stall is not all bad, it sent Pelmorex Inc. back to R&D and they developed a system that now can be broadcast on digital cable and satelite systems, as well as analog systems.



Thanks - that's an extremely useful tidbit!



			
				a_majoor said:
			
		

> ... To say that a signalling system is ineffective or improper because not everyone will be able to recieve it (for whatever reason) is silly, IMO. If I am not watching TV, I won't recieve this either. Does this mean the government should issue every citizen a strap on radio reciever so thay can broadcast warnings? If they do, will there be a department of battery management to ensure the recievers are always charged up? How about a department of volume control to make sure you have the reciever turned up to high volume when you are asleep?
> 
> By all means, put in an alert system. If 3 out of 5 people can get the warning, then they have a better chance to react, and can either warn their neighbours, or are available to help with the recovery afterwards!



Yup - fully in agreement with you there.
In civilian emergency management "doctrine", traditionally there's been a heavy reliance upon radio transmissions to get the message out "after the impact" ... however, unlike days of yore when households would gather around the radio and listen to "Howdy Doody" ... in this day and age of CDs and MP3 players there aren't as many battery-powered radios in the home as there used to be ...


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## pbi (20 Jan 2005)

Talking about radio stuff, we have this neat thing in our basement: it has a part that goes around and around, and you put these round black plates on it. Then you put this arm thing down on it and music comes out from somewhere. What do you call that thing, anyway? And could it receive these warnings? Could it send them? Should I cover my head with foil? What? _What?_

Cheers.


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## old medic (20 Jan 2005)

Ahh,

You have one of dem therer new-fangled Victorola machines. 
What will they think of next!!!  ;D


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