Case Study: Canadian Parliament reduces emergency alert time from 90 minutes to 90 seconds with BlackBerry AtHoc

Canadian Parliament Active Shooter Uncovers Emergency Communication Challenges

BlackBerry’s AtHoc team partnered with the Parliament of Canada after the 2014 Ottawa shooting exposed serious emergency-communication weaknesses: slow notification times, fragmented contact data across multiple systems, and the need to deliver clear, language-appropriate instructions in a bilingual environment and across media with very different constraints.

Using AtHoc Connect to build the Parliamentary Emergency Notification System, the team rolled out a phased, multi-channel alert platform with user-set language preferences, concise message templates, and self-service contact management backed by defined data custodianship. The result: alerts that once took 90 minutes to deploy can now be sent in about 90 seconds, with broader coverage, better coordination between agencies, and more reliable, language-appropriate delivery.

Canadian Parliament

Maxim Zakurdaev

Enterprise Architect and Technical Product Management