A British Columbia resident is advocating for the implementation of a Silver Alert system to assist in locating missing seniors with cognitive impairments, twelve years after his father’s disappearance. Sam Noh, whose father went missing in Coquitlam in 2013, believes that a Silver Alert system, which would issue phone alerts for vulnerable seniors with cognitive conditions, could have made a significant impact in his father’s case.
Several advocates and family members of missing seniors support the urgency of establishing a Silver Alert system in British Columbia, considering the province’s aging population and the critical need for timely action in missing senior cases. Noh emphasizes the time delay between police releasing information on social media about missing seniors and public awareness, urging the provincial government to take the lead in creating a more effective system.
Despite a private member’s bill introduced in 2014 to establish a Silver Alert system, little progress has been made on the issue. The RCMP is currently exploring the feasibility of Silver Alerts, awaiting the results of a recent pilot program in Quebec. In Manitoba, the Missing Persons Act was amended in 2017 to include Silver Alerts.
Advocates suggest that Silver Alerts could be targeted to specific geographic areas on phones, providing notifications similar to weather alerts rather than broad province-wide notifications. Coyle, a former search and rescue volunteer, highlights the importance of localized alerts to engage communities in the search for missing seniors.
Noh and Coyle, co-founders of the B.C. Silver Alert initiative, are actively promoting the implementation of the system at the municipal level. They stress that local governments have the capacity to issue localized alerts during emergencies and could similarly utilize this system to help locate missing individuals.
