Status of Women committee  Yes, I believe their training does need to be expanded. I believe there already is cultural sensitivity training for law enforcement agencies. However, it doesn't seem to be very effective. When I first launched this system, they all thought it was a great idea. Did they actuall

Status of Women committee  No, this is my first consultation. I did reach out to the senior policy analyst for the Minister of Crown-Indigenous Relations, who spoke with me in December. I met with a committee in January, but this is the first time I'm speaking in person to government about what I've been d

Status of Women committee  Well, I've been shouting it from the rooftops since I've had this up and running. Nobody's really listening, but I'm certainly not going to stop. So far, I've gone over to Lennox Island, P.E.I., and set up exactly the same alert system that I have in Cape Breton. I am now schedul

Status of Women committee  The only downfall to my current system.... This is probably where it wouldn't work nationally, and we would need to tailor it a little bit. Everbridge is so technologically sophisticated, it can do everything but wash your dishes. I'm sure that if we were able to work with Ever

Status of Women committee  In the very beginning, the five chiefs were so supportive of my idea. They gave me their summer students. We sent summer students to the doors of every single elder in every one of our five indigenous communities. It was to keep this culturally appropriate, and to receive the eld

Status of Women committee  Right. Although our alert system is run by us and for us, we do have non-indigenous people signing up for the system. Why is that? It's because they're not getting the information they require anywhere else. They see that our system is successful, that we're delivering informatio

Status of Women committee  Yes, absolutely. Just recently in Cape Breton, Chief Annie Daisley of the We'koqma'q First Nation was very successful with posting billboards. There's a very beautiful, powerful billboard on the sign of each indigenous community in Cape Breton. There may be some on the mainland i

Status of Women committee  To address your first question asking what can government do, I think the most important thing—and this doesn't just apply to government; it applies to every person—is inclusion. It's a very simple, one-word answer, inclusion. In my opening statement, I said that I was the firs

Status of Women committee  I'm not familiar with it either. Nonetheless, you mentioned that indigenous women are overrepresented in this area. What's sad about that comment is that this is the only area in which indigenous women are overrepresented, and that's a very unfortunate situation to be in. I

Status of Women committee  Yes. Thank you. I believe they are fully aware. Being proactive about it is a different question. We had an indigenous woman go missing. It was reported by an off-reserve organization. She didn't show up for curfew. They immediately phoned the police—this was at 10 o'clock at

Status of Women committee  I am a big fan of the Everbridge system and not only because we use it. The land line was a major component for me. Also, the other big selling point for that is that you can record your own message, which means that the chief in the community can record his own voice in his own

Status of Women committee  For most people now, as soon as we send out an alert, I would say that 80% of our messages are going out by the text only option. It's about sending a text message and sending an email. People are doing screenshots of it and putting it on their socials. Now it's even carried to n

Status of Women committee  It's the UNSM emergency management Facebook page.

Status of Women committee  I started out using funding for my own program when I first started the program. After the first year—

Status of Women committee  It's based on how many people are subscribed to the system through the Everbridge platform. Currently, mine is funded through Indigenous Services Canada's EMAP.