Western Standard - May 21, 2026


Bringing Vulnerable Seniors Home： Raquel Dancho On The Need For A National Silver Alert

Mentioned
Raquel D'Angelo Moberg Maleed
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Episode Stats


Length

9 minutes

Words per minute

187.79

Word count

1,758

Sentence count

60


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this episode, I'm joined by Raquel D'Ancho, MP for Kildan and St. Paul, Manitoba, who introduces a bill on establishing a National Silver Alert framework. A Silver Alert is similar to an Amber Alert, but it would be focused on seniors living with cognitive impairments like dementia.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 So I'm joined with Raquel D'Ancho, MP for Kildan and St. Paul, Manitoba, who introduced a private
00:00:10.280 member's bill on establishing a national silver alert framework. Raquel, can you tell me more
00:00:15.580 about what that means? Right. So if you'll allow me, I'll just talk a little bit about the story
00:00:21.760 that generated this. It really paints the picture of why this bill is needed in Canada. So a silver
00:00:26.020 alert is similar to an amber alert, but it would be focused on seniors living with cognitive
00:00:31.100 impairments like dementia. And so in my community, about two and a half years ago, an elderly
00:00:36.060 gentleman who was a grandfather, a father, a community member, wandered out of his home in
00:00:41.780 the middle of a Winnipeg winter and was never found. And again, this is sort of a suburb like
00:00:47.620 any other. It just was, despite an extensive search effort, he was never found and is presumed
00:00:53.300 deceased. And the family, as a result of this tragedy, really took up the mantle to champion
00:00:59.500 a silver alert. They firmly believe, and I agree with them, that if a silver alert had been in
00:01:04.280 place, similar to an amber alert, where perhaps you'd get a notification to your phone if you're
00:01:08.760 in that geographic area where he went missing, perhaps he could have been found and saved and
00:01:15.460 he'd still be with us today. So that's really the genesis of this and really wanting to optimize
00:01:22.380 the technology in the palm of our hand to save the lives of seniors who are incredibly vulnerable
00:01:27.780 when they're living with dementia. So thanks for sharing that story, actually. So that explains
00:01:34.240 more as to why you are introducing that bill and given your background and where you're based.
00:01:39.800 My question is, do we not in any jurisdiction in Canada have anything similar or anything
00:01:44.420 appropriate for that kind of case? So right now in some provinces, there are things that they
00:01:50.460 call silver alerts but they're very different than amber alerts so right now for example in
00:01:54.780 Quebec and Manitoba the silver alert structure is to send out alerts via police websites or police
00:02:01.200 social media and so if you're not paying very close attention to these methods of of public
00:02:09.380 notice then you wouldn't you wouldn't see this however of course an amber alert the way that
00:02:14.260 they're set up right now we receive a text if a child is abducted and so it alerts you right away
00:02:20.000 that this has happened so that's sort of the difference between what's in place right now
00:02:24.160 that's being called a silver alert versus the current framework for amber alert so this bill
00:02:29.200 is looking to close that gap with a federal leadership role while working within provincial
00:02:34.960 with the provinces who have jurisdiction for the most part in this area to establish really a
00:02:40.320 guideline and a framework across the country to support provinces in initiating something that
00:02:46.080 more resembles uh the amber alert uh notification structure so since you're comparing it often let's
00:02:53.040 talk about the amber alert how do you view do you view it as an effective system do you believe that
00:02:57.360 there's any overreach uh i know a lot of people complain all the time about the sound and the
00:03:02.080 fact that it comes without warning um other times people you know argue that sometimes the area and
00:03:08.640 range of people that are devices that are being tapped into an alert can sometimes be you know
00:03:13.920 a little bit too broad too relevant sometimes so how how do you and how do the consumers view the
00:03:19.440 amber alert current currently as it stands i'm glad you brought that up it's a great question
00:03:24.240 so the amber alert structure is set up often a child is abducted uh via vehicle and so there's
00:03:30.640 often a hundred kilometer radius or more i know i've received amber alerts uh from northwestern
00:03:36.400 ontario and we're in winnipeg hundreds of kilometers away from the location so the
00:03:40.960 the good thing about a silver alert is often seniors who wander away from home or their care
00:03:46.400 home are generally speaking on foot. And so you can geotarget it to just a several kilometer
00:03:52.320 radius, four kilometers up to maybe 12 kilometers. I think the data shows that they're generally
00:03:58.700 within that limited area. So you're really micro-targeting the cell phone area that you
00:04:04.640 would be reaching out to. So that would eliminate a lot of the, you know, why am I getting, if I'm
00:04:09.240 in Winnipeg, why am I getting an alert from Regina? That would not happen. If this is implemented how
00:04:15.600 we envision it, it would be much more geo-targeted. So that's great, actually, because the technology
00:04:21.160 today exists that we can really micro-target within a couple blocks radius, for example,
00:04:26.740 in an urban setting. And so that would, from our perspective, eliminate some of that concern with,
00:04:33.300 you know, you get amber alerts when you're very far away. That wouldn't be the case here,
00:04:36.240 because people are generally on foot when they go missing.
00:04:39.060 So we can target it more closely to where they went missing.
00:04:43.340 In terms of the technology of delivering the alert itself,
00:04:46.900 how do you view the Amber Alert's effectiveness
00:04:48.540 and what would you want for your silver alert bill to establish?
00:04:52.580 I mean, same kind of sound, same kind of delivery method,
00:04:55.880 text message warning, opt-out opportunity
00:04:58.300 or mandatory for every device that's capable.
00:05:01.800 What's your view?
00:05:03.000 So we've written the legislation in a way that's pretty,
00:05:05.260 that's designed as a framework so it's it's not as prescriptive as some of those things that you
00:05:10.900 mentioned what we would envision and how the bill is is drafted is that there would be
00:05:15.600 quite extensive consultation with the provinces with law enforcement but also other experts
00:05:21.780 experts in for example elderly care dementia care those kinds of things to establish what
00:05:27.400 sort of framework it would look like you mentioned like an opt-out framework or the sound of the
00:05:33.420 notification. Those would all be things I would imagine that would be discussed by the people who
00:05:38.280 have really been on the front lines of managing the safety and security of people with dementia,
00:05:44.100 which is particularly the elderly. And so that's where we would look to a lot of expert testimony.
00:05:48.560 So I was very keen to have the legislation written in a way that was very much focused on
00:05:54.460 expert feedback. I'm not an expert in dementia. I'm not a medical professional, nor am I in law
00:06:00.140 enforcement. But I do have an experience as a lawmaker and certainly with this family. And
00:06:05.800 my family as well has been touched by dementia. I think everybody knows someone who's been
00:06:09.540 touched by dementia. It's a terrible disease. So with that experience, I feel very, very strongly
00:06:15.680 that there must be a way that we can establish a framework that works, that is manageable,
00:06:22.420 that the public supports. I'm very convinced of that.
00:06:26.860 And lastly, do you expect there to be support from other opposition parties and the government
00:06:31.840 members on this, given, I mean, the government has a majority today? Do you expect cooperation
00:06:37.440 across the, it doesn't sound like a very partisan issue, so do you expect much broad cooperation?
00:06:43.040 We have received indications from the Liberal Party, the governing party, that they will be
00:06:47.840 supporting the bill to committee, so we hope that they maintain that commitment.
00:06:50.960 they again I believe what you've said is correct we've written this in a way and are pursuing this
00:06:57.020 in a way that is not political not partisan we don't believe that it is we know that dementia
00:07:01.700 is impacting many many people in Canada in fact by 2030 that's likely to be 1 million people in
00:07:07.480 Canada suffering with dementia there's over 400 people diagnosed per day and it really is a very
00:07:13.660 pressing issue if you if you look at some of the data for example from public safety Canada around
00:07:18.280 60% of people living with dementia may go missing at some point in their life. And if they're not
00:07:22.980 found within 12 hours, there's a 50% likelihood they'll be found deceased or severely injured.
00:07:28.740 And again, like I said, they go missing within a 4 to 12 kilometer radius. So with the technology
00:07:33.780 we have, there's no reason that we can't prevent terrible tragedies that have happened
00:07:39.880 across the country. If you look at some of the data just from news media, we've seen very tragic
00:07:46.000 of cases where a senior with dementia will just wander out of the care home. They somehow got
00:07:49.940 around the security systems they have, and they're found in a snowbank a block away, deceased, the
00:07:55.580 next morning. So there are things like this that can be prevented. Mr. Moberg, as a last point,
00:08:01.820 the gentleman who went missing and has not been found in my community, the search party that
00:08:07.640 happened, a woman came to that search party, and she says that, she said that, I think I may have
00:08:13.260 saw him the next day, but I wasn't sure if it was him. And I hadn't seen the notification. I just
00:08:19.240 saw a man at a local health lab that he happened to go to with his wife, who just seemed a little
00:08:26.680 bit confused. And I felt that maybe there was something wrong, but I didn't know to act on it.
00:08:31.720 If this lady had received a silver alert to her phone that morning with his description,
00:08:37.080 perhaps that would have been enough to underline her gut response that this man needed help.
00:08:41.400 and that's that critical gap
00:08:43.840 that we're looking to fill with this bill.
00:08:45.760 So we have received positive support
00:08:47.780 from the Liberal Party.
00:08:48.680 We hope that that continues
00:08:49.840 and when we can get this bill to committee
00:08:52.080 and really dig into some of the logistics
00:08:54.780 of how this could be implemented,
00:08:56.380 how can we work with provinces,
00:08:58.320 those things could be discussed
00:09:00.520 at a very in-depth level, we hope, at committee.
00:09:03.020 So we're hopeful.
00:09:04.700 We have positive signs so far,
00:09:06.220 so we'll see how it goes,
00:09:07.820 but we're working very hard to get everybody on board.
00:09:11.080 I look forward to speaking to you at that later date when committing and everything else starts to push through on your private member's bill.
00:09:17.300 Thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me today.
00:09:19.560 Yes, thank you, Maleed, for your interest. I really appreciate it.