Case Study: Canada House of Commons achieves near-instant bilingual emergency alerts with BlackBerry AtHoc

Canadian Parliament Active Shooter Uncovers Emergency Communication Challenges

After the 2014 active-shooter attack at Parliament Hill, BlackBerry AtHoc worked with the Parliamentary Emergency Notification System team to tackle critical gaps in emergency communications: slow alerting, fragmented contact data, and the need to deliver clear, timely instructions in both official languages across multiple media and constrained message formats.

Using AtHoc Connect, the ENS implemented a multi-channel, integrated alert platform with user-set language preferences, phased data integration and self-service contact management, and concise message templates for each delivery vehicle. The result was unified, bilingual-capable alerts and faster, more coordinated responses — notifications that once took about 90 minutes to deploy can now be issued in roughly 90 seconds, markedly improving safety and operational readiness.

Canada House of Commons

Maxim Zakurdaev

Enterprise Architect and Technical Product Management