Amber Alert text took 2.5 hours to send, but N.L. minister 'pleased' with response

More than two hours lapsed between the time police in Newfoundland and Labrador issued an Amber Alert and a province-wide text notification went out, but the minister responsible for the department in charge of the system said he's pleased with how things went.

Police issued an Amber Alert at 3:15 p.m. on Jan. 2, after a 12-year-old boy was allegedly abducted by his father from Corner Brook. The emergency alert didn't go out over the cellular network until 5:35 p.m.

Just before 7 p.m., the 47-year-old man and his son were found in Port aux Basques. The man was arrested and is charged with parental abduction and stealing a car.

Minister Derrick Bragg, whose government department includes fire and emergency services, which is the partner in the Canada-wide Pelmorex alert system, said his department didn't get an official request from police to issue the alert until over an hour after the Amber Alert was issued.

There is a great risk every time a child is missing from a safe place, regardless of who abducted them.- Amanda Pick, CEO of Missing Children Society of Canada

"We didn't have any correspondence from those people [police] until 4:22, so it was actually a full hour, hour and 20 minutes after they initiated it," Bragg said.

"They did it through and you would have to talk to the police force on this but my understanding is they did it through social media. But we did it through all the cellphones, through the radio and the TV, so we reached a lot more people."

This is believed to be the first-ever Amber Alert issued in Newfoundland and Labrador, and Bragg said it's the first official use of the system, other than testing, since it was installed in 2018.

Bragg said the only way to cut down on the delay is to get the information to his department faster.

"I can't say that enough. Like if at two o'clockthat day we were notified, by three o'clock or by 2:30, this would have been issued out. We didn't hear tell, we did not get any notification until 4:22, and at 5:35 we had it issued," Bragg said.

Royal Newfoundland Constabulary Supt. Pat Roche said last week he would like to trim the time between an Amber Alert and the emergency text system's activation in the future.

As for why it took over an hour between the official request from police and getting the message out on LTE and 4G networks in Newfoundland and Labrador, Bragg said there were formatting issues.

"It's almost like when you would start Twitter, first when you did Twitter you only had so many characters you could use. Well this is how the system works," Bragg said.

"It was not unlimited, it had to be formatted to fit the system. And the people involved right now, to issue this in the future, would know that as of today, I'm sure."

When asked why it took another hour from when police put the request in, and when the alert system was activated, Bragg said "an hour is not a long timeframe," adding he's happy with the system's overall performance.

"We are really pleased with how this went out, how the message, when it was all put in place, how quickly it went out, and to so many people across this province," he told CBC's St. John's Morning Show.

"I mean, we are really pleased with how this system worked."

'Great risk' no matter who abducts child

Amanda Pick, CEO of the Missing Children Society of Canada, said in this particular instance, the emergency alert system took "longer than normal."

"That time delay is not common, and certainly I would agree that when we talk about processes and co-ordination that everybody will work hard to ensure that there's a seamless distribution of that information when it comes to an Amber Alert," she said.

"If there's been a challenge, people work really hard to change that, because we know that time matters, so working together to ensure the best opportunity to bring that child home safely, I absolutely know that that's what everybody wants when it comes to protecting a child."

The threshold to issue an Amber Alert is "quite high," Pick said, and determined by police, but the program was created because there was "an urgent need to connect information into people's hands" to make a difference in the case of an abducted child.

"I think there is a perception that if a child is abducted by a parent, that that child's not at risk," Pick said.

"What we want everybody to understand is, there is a great risk every time a child is missing from a safe place, regardless of who abducted them."

In 2019, RCMP statistics list fewer than 200 of the missing children reports were parent abductions, Pick said, while less than 30 were instances of a stranger abducting a child something she said it "incredibly rare" in Canada.

Overall last year, Pick said there were 42,000 children reported missing.

"I know that's a shocking number and when we're looking at statistics, as we're discussing now, the majority of those missing children reports are children who are vulnerable and runaways," Pick said.

She added that while people may be inclined to dismiss reports of a runaway child, "times have changed," and the public should reframe how they categorize a runaway child.

"When a child makes a decision not to be in a safe place regardless of if somebody's made it for them, if they made it because somebody has influenced them we just need to act as a community," she said.

"We need to take seriously every case of a missing child, because when the child is missing they're at risk of a whole host of things happening to them."

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