CANALERT

CANALERT is the name for the Government of Canada's national public alerting initiative. Currently CANALERT is in the development stage, and is intended to enable emergency managers to deliver public alerts over radio, television, mobile phones, and the Internet.

Work began on CANALERT in 2003 with the First Canadian Public Alerting Forum and Workshop and continued with another forum in 2005. Industry Canada is the lead federal agency for this initiative and it is working closely with provincial and territorial governments to define guidelines, procedures, and protocols. CANALERT will use the Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) for exchanging alert message across communications technologies, and work is ongoing to define a national CAP profile and implementation.

In January 2007, ministers responsible for emergency management from the federal, provincial, and territorial governments reaffirmed the importance of a national public alerting system in Canada, sending a clear message to Canadians that work on CANALERT will continue to go forward.

If it becomes operational as intended, it will be the first national public alerting system in Canada since the demise of the National Attack Warning Siren System (NAWSS) in the late 1980s.

ee also

* Emergency Public Warning System, in place in the province of Alberta only

External links

* [http://strategis.ic.gc.ca/epic/site/et-tdu.nsf/en/h_wj00019e.html Industry Canada's public alerting website]
* [http://www.scics.gc.ca/cinfo07/830903004_e.html Press Release] Federal-Provincial-Territorial Meeting of Ministers responsible for Emergency Management reaffirming the importance of a national public alerting system for Canada