Lessons from tragedy: Canada needs a safer emergency response system for when people go missing

When 11-year-old Parker Wells went missing earlier this summer, should emergency response have included an immediate public alert? An Amber Alert for the non-verbal autistic boy came more than 48 hours after the fact, following traditional protocols.

When he was found dead two weeks later, the public outcry for change was immediate and fierce.

Across Canada, governments, advocates and emergency-response leaders are reconsidering what should happen when a missing person faces an immediate risk of serious harm. This creates an important policy opportunity to ask a series of questions and set the foundation for substantial reform to emergency response beyond just an alert.

When should the government intervene? What information should be shared with the public? How do we act quickly without unnecessarily compromising privacy or autonomy? And how do we ensure disability does not become shorthand for vulnerability?

These are not simply technical questions. They are questions about rights, values and the kind of society we want our emergency systems to reflect.

In August, Autism Alliance of Canada convened a national roundtable bringing together Autistic people and families with lived experience, first responders, search-and-rescue and emergency-management experts, disability and community organizations, and policymakers. The findings were published in our recently released report, What We Heard: Building a Safer Emergency Response When People Go Missing.

One message cut across the discussion: an alert alone is a tool, not a response system. And the goal is not simply to maximize intervention but to respond proportionately, effectively and with respect for the person at the centre of the emergency.

A diagnosis should not determine whether someone qualifies for an elevated emergency response. Autism, dementia, intellectual disability or another condition does not automatically make someone vulnerable. What matters is the person’s circumstances and functional ability: Can they recognize danger? Communicate their needs? Seek or accept assistance? Return safely without support?

A rights-respecting framework should focus on functional risk and urgency, not diagnosis.

Privacy presents another challenging tension to balance. Families and trusted supporters may hold information critical to a search: how someone communicates, what causes distress, where they may go, or how they are most safely approached. Responders may need that information quickly. The public usually does not.

An emergency alert should communicate only what people need to know to help. Medical details, diagnoses and other personal information should not become the price of receiving help, particularly when information shared publicly may continue circulating long after someone returns home.

The principle should be simple — the right information, to the right people, for the right purpose.

An alert must also activate a co-ordinated response. Police, search and rescue, emergency management, families and community volunteers need clear roles and ways to share information. Responders need practical training.

Once someone is found, reunification should protect dignity and address communication, sensory, medical and emotional needs.

Canada also needs national consistency without pretending every community operates the same way. Urban, rural, remote, northern and Indigenous communities may rely on very different infrastructure, relationships and local knowledge. Common principles can coexist with local flexibility.

The goal of the roundtable was not to produce consensus on one alert name or mechanism. Reasonable people can favour different tools while agreeing on the principles that should govern them. At the same time, there was broad common ground: respond to actual risk rather than diagnosis; protect privacy and autonomy; involve people with lived experience in policy design; equip responders with appropriate information and training; co-ordinate the response; and learn from each incident.

The choices we make now will shape more than an emergency-notification system. They will shape how public institutions understand vulnerability, how we balance privacy and safety, whose knowledge counts in an emergency and how we treat people when they are most at risk.

A good system should help bring people home safely. It should also protect their rights, dignity and humanity while doing so.

Jonathan Lai is the executive director of Autism Alliance of Canada.