Status of Women Committee on March 19th, 2024

[Anna Roberts, Conservative, King—Vaughan, ON]

There's a reason why I bring this up. You're probably too young to remember this, but in 2003, the northeast blackout saw 50 million people lose electricity across Ontario and seven American states. On July 8, 2013, 300,000 Torontonians saw a power outage, and 1,400 passengers were trapped in trains and subways, and whatnot. It took them hours to free these individuals.

When there's a power outage of that magnitude, nothing works. I lived through the 2003 outage. At the time I was working at a financial institution, and we had to shut everything down, obviously, for reasons I'm sure you're aware of.

How can we communicate when things like this happen?

[Kurt Eby]

I'm not too young to remember that.

There are other discussions going on through the CRTC with the communications providers about that exact issue, because I think everybody recognizes it. I know that, out east when the hurricane came, a lot of power went down. If there's not power to the cellphone towers, can you issue alerts? They're looking to determine if they can share infrastructure with the—

[Anna Roberts, Conservative, King—Vaughan, ON]

I'm going to stop you there for a second because I only have a few minutes. I can tell you that there is a company in my riding that has a solution to that, but that's a topic for another day.

We love to give our business to Canadian companies, so how would you say your company differs from the company that was used? I believe it was Everbridge. Where do you see the differences there? We've heard from our previous witnesses. Can you give us some comparisons and cost measures?

We just spent a fortune on arrive scam, like $60 million, so how cost efficient is your company compared to Everbridge?

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

You have about 15 seconds.

[Kurt Eby]

As I mentioned, we've operated this alerting system since 2010, when it launched for free, at no cost, so I don't—

[Anna Roberts, Conservative, King—Vaughan, ON]

We could have had the arrive scam done by you for no cost. Where have you been?

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

I'm going to pass it over now to Lisa.

Lisa, you have the floor for three minutes.

[Lisa Hepfner, Liberal, Hamilton Mountain, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you to our witness.

Kurt, you were speaking with my colleague Ms. Zarrillo about people you've lobbied. You met with me in my office in my previous role on the heritage committee, and we talked about broadcasting licences and things like that.

One of the things I remember from that meeting—and I believe this is true—is that, when we buy a cellphone in Canada, it's not your weather app that's installed in these phones. It's an American weather network app that comes preloaded on our phones. Would that cause any issues in rolling out a red dress alert through your system?

[Kurt Eby]

That's a great question. That is true. All of our app users are gained by our company through reputation and quality. People have to go and download the Weather Network app themselves, and we're superproud of that. We didn't pay to be on something.

Right now, the broadcast and media alerts don't go through the app; they just go right to your phone. The Weather Network app does pass on the rest of the alerts, including those in Canada. Having that on your phone helps to make sure that you'll get an alert if, for some reason, you're not in an LTE coverage zone or you're just working off Wi-Fi. That's one good reason to have our app on your phone among many other good reasons.

[Lisa Hepfner, Liberal, Hamilton Mountain, ON]

Some of my other colleagues have intimated that your vision of how this red dress alert would work through your system would be like Everbridge. Instead of Everbridge, we would use the Weather Network app. Could it be as culturally sensitive and as on the ground and able to be used? You've answered this a little bit, but I'm trying to envision whether The Weather Network could play the exact same role that Everbridge plays in Nova Scotia, where it's completely community driven. There's no bureaucracy and it moves quickly.

Could you replicate that as well through The Weather Network?

[Kurt Eby]

Absolutely, there's no question. Any technology that needs to be added, we can do. Our track record is that we would take whatever steps are necessary to make it work. Also, as we heard from the previous witnesses, we could make it work the right way, a way that has trust and reliability.

[Lisa Hepfner, Liberal, Hamilton Mountain, ON]

What I understood from your previous testimony is that nobody pays you for the silver alert or the amber alert. Would it be the same for the red dress system? Would it be cost-neutral for the communities that are looking to have this service?

[Kurt Eby]

The way it works right now, because we have a fixed budget, is that the budget is directed by all the provinces and territories. I would envision that it is possible that there might have to be a commercial model to build out some additional channels, and we would wait to see where this committee goes and where the results go for that.

[Lisa Hepfner, Liberal, Hamilton Mountain, ON]

Just really quickly, would it require a lot of negotiations with provinces and territories?

[Kurt Eby]

No, we could do it without that.

[Lisa Hepfner, Liberal, Hamilton Mountain, ON]

Great, thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Andréanne, you have a minute and a bit.

[Andréanne Larouche, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Mr. Eby, I will ask you a similar question. Creating a red dress alert was recommended some time ago. It's included in reports on fighting violence against women and girls, especially indigenous women and girls.

In the 2023 budget, the government set aside funds to set up a federal-provincial-territorial-indigenous table to move priority issues forward, including the creation of a red dress alert.

Were you consulted? Did you have discussions with the government, who will have to fund this table and fund an action plan?

[Kurt Eby]

I was consulted by MP Gazan and MP Damoff about a year ago. They asked very similar questions to what's happening right now. How does the official system work and how would you add the red dress alert? I provided pretty much all the same information I'm sharing today about that.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Thank you very much.

I'm going to pass it over to Bonita for her final question.

[Bonita Zarrillo, NDP, Port Moody—Coquitlam, BC]

Thank you.

What are the relevant laws and regulations already in place to protect the use of personal information within alert systems in Canada?

[Kurt Eby]

I think the existing privacy law would be the law in place. It's not relevant to our current alerting system, because it's a one-way distribution feed. We don't have any personal information within the system. None is gathered or used, at all.

[Bonita Zarrillo, NDP, Port Moody—Coquitlam, BC]

Great.

That's it.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

I want to ask a question and get a bit of chair's prerogative here, if you don't mind.

One thing we've heard so much about with missing and murdered indigenous women is this: We know about that remote part. Many have been much further north, so there may not be police. In one case, within 500 kilometres, there was one police officer.

When we're looking at that type of security, what is your reach into those remote and rural communities further north, where they don't even, sometimes, have roads? If you were able to do something like the red dress alert, how would you do it in the most remote areas?

[Kurt Eby]

Presently, as a broadcasting company and alerting provider, we reach those places through satellite TV. All of the alerts are intrusive on satellite TV, as well as cable. There is cable in some remote areas, obviously. There are cellphone services in some remote areas, as we discussed. There are still areas that could use, I think, better service, but we reach them that way, as well.