Canada’s public alert system faces uncertain future

The federal notification system that alerts Canadians about life-threatening emergency situations is facing an uncertain future.

The funding agreement for the National Public Alerting System (NPAS), which sends out alerts for extreme weather, air quality, wildfires, Amber Alerts and other threats, expires on Aug. 31, 2026, and it is unclear what will happen next.

“Urgent action is required to sustain Canada’s life-saving public alerting capability,”  according to a Public Safety Canada memo to the minister of emergency management that Canada’s National Observer obtained through an access to information request. 

The current funding arrangement mandates that basic television packages include The Weather Network and Météo Media channel packages. lt also requires Pelmorex, the owner of these two channels and owner-operator of the alert system, to provide emergency management organizations with an emergency alert capability at no cost, the briefing note explains.

“The CRTC has signaled the current model, which provides services at no cost, is not sustainable,” according to the briefing note. The document, dated June 25, 2025, said the funding model “is no longer viable due to declines in the number of subscribers to cable and satellite television.”

The federal government is currently deciding how to fund the alert system after its agreement with the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission expires in August 2026, Soraya Lemur, press secretary for Minister of Emergency Management Eleanor Olszewski, told Canada’s National Observer. Because the federal budget has not been released “there is not much that we can say” but “NPAS is a priority for us,” Lemur said.

“Our new government is working diligently to advance new ways to strengthen and renew the NPAS system to ensure continued service for Canadians.”

About 60 to 70 per cent of all alerts come from the federal government, according to the briefing note. Environment and Climate Change Canada uses the alert system for extreme weather announcements, Natural Resources Canada uses it to issue earthquake warnings and Public Safety Canada has access to the system to issue missile warnings. Police departments and the RCMP also use the system in conjunction with first responders and municipalities. 

These organizations, including some provincial and territorial agencies, create emergency announcements that are fed into the alert system and sent out as geo-targeted text, TV, web, social media and radio alerts to Canadians in the area. 

The national alert system is the “infrastructural backbone” for rapidly warning Canadians about hazards and should be considered a human right, Jennifer Spinney, an assistant professor of administrative studies at York University, said in an emailed statement to Canada’s National Observer.
With the funding agreement set to expire, the federal government has to figure out a new payment structure and ensure continuity during the transition.

Public Safety Canada is currently working with federal, provincial and territorial authorities to strengthen the sustainability, governance and effectiveness of emergency public alerting in Canada and “to explore alternative funding models,” the ministry said in an emailed statement.

Spinney described the alert system as “a kind of glue that binds many disparate groups together,” referring to alert issuers and the distributors, which include radio and TV stations, webpages, social media, satellite providers and more.

Spinney worried that if the federal government does not find a sustainable, equitable funding solution, all those groups will be left to alert in isolation, which risks creating a fragmented, ineffective system that confuses Canadians and may leave some regions with subpar service or none at all, she said.

Indigenous communities — which are disproportionately impacted by extreme weather driven by climate change — should be part of a multi-faceted conversation about the technology, funding model and the national alert system’s capabilities, Nirupama Agrawal, a professor and founding member of York University’s disaster and emergency management program, told Canada’s National Observer. 

The briefing note also flagged that there are issues relating to accountability, resilience and consistent use of the system that cannot be addressed within the CRTC framework. The federal government is working with provinces and territories to address the recommendations of the Nova Scotia Mass Casualty Commission, the statement said. The RCMP used Twitter to communicate during the 2020 mass shooting in Nova Scotia, instead of the Alert Ready system, despite the commission’s finding that it would have been the best tool to communicate warnings to the public. The commission’s final report recommended a full review of the alert system before its licence is up for renewal. The commission also recommended the government transition away from relying on a private corporation — Plemorex — as the provider of Canada’s national alerting system.

In 2024, there were 855 alerts issued across Canada, according to Pelmorex’s alert count webpage. 

Many of these alerts are for extreme weather events, including Hurricane Fiona in Atlantic Canada, the 2022 derecho storm in southern Ontario and Quebec and throughout wildfire season. But use is not consistent. No alerts were issued during the deadly heatwave and atmospheric river that hit Vancouver, BC, in 2021. Since then, the province added alerting capacity for more hazards including heat and flooding and in 2024 alerts were used to warn people about flash flooding from the landslide that blocked the Chilcotin River.

The webpage doesn’t break down the alerts by date or geolocation, but just indicates how many of each alert type went out in each province or territory. For example, 240 of Saskatchewan’s 263 alerts were tornado warnings. But Agrawal said to make sound decisions about the alert system, you need those additional data points, including the date, geolocation, resulting evacuations or other actions. “They cannot have accountability, transparency, resilience, continuity, if they didn’t look into all these factors.”

The alert system should be viewed as an investment, not a cost, regardless of how it’s funded, Agrawal said.

“You cannot look at this cost thing in a conventional way,” she said. “This is the cost of preventing a disaster by alerting the public to a serious emergency.”

Along with addressing the funding model, there should be a full review and reassessment of the system itself, Agrawal said.

“It’s so old, it is the technology of yesterday and today, we are in a completely different place,” Agrawal said.

“Look at it, revise it, update it.”

Ensuring there are no interruptions in the system as it transitions funding models is a matter of public trust, and it’s already hard enough to get people to pay attention, she said.

Agrawal recalls when Toronto was hit with a major ice storm in 2013, many people were out on the roads despite warnings advising against doing exactly that.

“I’ve talked to so many people within my building [in North York] … and I would say, ‘Well, why were you on the road? There was a warning issued.’ And they’d say, ‘I don’t know about those warnings.’

“And then people are stranded, and you need to go in and rescue them,” Agrawal said.

— This article was originally published by Canada’s National Observer