A gap in the system, not in the rules for who deserves help
This campaign started with Jennifer Ball, a Calgary mother of a non-verbal autistic child. Her question is simple: what happens when a vulnerable person goes missing, but there's no evidence anyone took them?
"It is essential to recognize that their inability to communicate and understand danger puts them at a heightened risk." — Jennifer Ball, Calgary
Right now, Canada's Amber Alert exists for one specific scenario: abduction. It's a vital tool, and it works well for what it's designed to do. But people with autism, dementia, developmental disabilities, or other conditions that make them non-verbal or unable to recognize danger can go missing in a completely different way — no suspect, no abduction, just a person alone near a road, a river, or in freezing weather. Under the current criteria, that situation may not trigger any province-wide alert at all, whether the person is a child or an older adult.
Alert requires evidence of abduction
If there's no sign a person was taken, dispatch of a mass public alert isn't guaranteed — even if they're non-verbal, medically fragile, or at serious risk of harm.
An "At Risk" / Indigo Alert category
A new alert tier triggered by a person's vulnerability — developmental, cognitive, medical, or communication-based, at any age — regardless of whether abduction is suspected.
Closing this gap doesn't mean replacing the Amber Alert. It means giving law enforcement a second, faster tool for a different kind of emergency — one that current criteria weren't designed to catch.
This isn't a call to alert the public every time someone goes missing. Amber Alert works precisely because its criteria are narrow and specific — an Indigo Alert should follow the same discipline: clear, verified risk factors, not a blanket trigger. Alert fatigue is real; a system people learn to tune out helps no one. The goal is a small number of alerts that people take seriously, not a large number they start to ignore.
Why this started in Alberta — and why it can't stop there
This campaign began in Calgary, with one family's search for a way to make sure no one else waits helplessly for an alert that never comes. But the gap it uncovered isn't an Alberta problem — it's a Canada problem.
Canada's alert broadcasting infrastructure (Alert Ready) is coordinated nationally, but the authority to set alert criteria and actually issue an alert sits with each province and territory individually — which is also why Amber Alert criteria already aren't identical from province to province. There's no single federal law that can create an Indigo Alert everywhere at once. It has to be won province by province, and territory by territory — which is exactly why this site is built the way it is: start where the momentum already exists, then build the same case, one legislature at a time, until every Canadian has this protection no matter where they live.
