Tragedy in Old Quebec: why was the national alert system not...

Quebec police have not yet been trained for the national alert system, which has been used very little since its inception, but there is no reason to believe that they would have used it for sure, had they been able to. , in Old Quebec on Saturday evening.

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The Québec En Alerte system, a Québec counterpart to the Canadian system implemented in recent years, makes it possible to interrupt television and radio broadcasts for the broadcast of an urgent message, then send alerts to the telephones. cellphones connected to the LTE network.

“The municipalities have received preliminary information regarding the capabilities of this tool, but no training has yet been done or any practice with the police forces, other than the Sûreté du Québec”, confirmed the spokesperson. from SPVQ Sandra Dion, Monday afternoon.

“For us, there was no question of testing this in the middle of a police operation so as not to compromise the operation. The situation was evolving and changing rapidly. We used the means we had at that time, our Twitter account, to communicate, ”she explained. It is impossible to say whether the alert system would have been used in this specific context to warn the population of the presence of a dangerous individual in the neighborhood, if the SPVQ had had the opportunity.

The two murderous attacks of the attacker with the saber would have occurred a few minutes apart, a little before 10:30 p.m., according to several witnesses met since Sunday. Whatever the means, some nevertheless wonder about the time taken by the police of Quebec before alerting the population via its Twitter thread. The first message was tweeted at 11:57 p.m.

“*** ATTENTION *** The SPVQ is actively looking for a man who allegedly caused multiple victims with a stabbing weapon. According to our preliminary information, the suspect is dressed in medieval clothes. The incidents occurred in the area of ​​Parliament Hill. If seen: 911 ”, wrote the SPVQ, information which was immediately relayed by the news media.

Labeaume praises the work of the SPVQ

Asked at a press conference on the police operation on Monday, the mayor of Quebec, Régis Labeaume, praised the work of the members of the SPVQ who pinned the suspect a few hours later. “They did a good job. It is not obvious in this kind of situation. Two and a half hours is not bad to find someone in town ”, he reacted.

Sandra Dion reminds that each emergency is unique. “Before sending anything [comme alerte], it is still necessary to validate the information so as not to mislead citizens or compromise personal safety. It was very scalable at the end of the week. There were nevertheless police officers on the ground who, near the events, warned people who were in the area. ”

Amber alert and tornado alert

Since 2017, in addition to the numerous test messages, the national alert system has served almost exclusively to notify residents of a specific area in Canada of a possible tornado or the abduction of a child (Amber Alert ). An alert was also issued in April 2019 for the sudden flooding of water in the Laurentians.

In 2020, The newspaper identified 18 alerts across the country, including ten for tornadoes in Ontario and Gatineau, three for Amber alerts and five related to the health crisis, in order to warn, in particular, people from different provinces that they had to isolate themselves on their return from their trip.

However, there is a whole range of possibilities for using the system, you can read on the Québec En Alerte website. The police, if they had been trained, would probably have been able to communicate with the Government Operations Center (COG) of the Ministère de la Sécurité publique, which manages the alert system, in order to relay information to the citizens of Old Quebec and around.

Only two alert distributors

However, the Ministère de la Sécurité publique (MSP) and Environment and Climate Change Canada are the only organizations that can issue alerts to the public through the Québec En Alerte system.

“For other types of alerts, it is from the MSP’s Government Operations Center (COG) that they are issued, at the request of local stakeholders such as municipalities, police forces and fire safety services ”, specifies Marie-Josée Montminy, public relations officer at the MSP.

“The Québec En Alerte system stems from a pan-Canadian initiative of organizations responsible for emergency measures in the provinces and territories, federal departments and certain broadcasting and telecommunications companies. The objective of this system is to warn the public quickly of events constituting a real or apprehended threat to the lives of citizens for which immediate action is required ”, we can read on the government’s website.

During the massacre in Nova Scotia last spring, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) were criticized for not having used the national alert system.