Official Hansard
Mr. Speaker, this being Multiple Sclerosis Awareness Month, my thoughts go out to my friend Marie-Andrée, who is courageously battling this disease despite the difficulties she faces. I always think of my friend Marie-Andrée when we recognize Multiple Sclerosis Awareness Month, because we obviously need more donations and grants to advance the research, so I want her to know I am thinking of her. Today, we are discussing a bill on a very important topic. I have devoted my entire career to serving seniors, especially those in the process of losing their independence, first as a social worker and then as a manager within Quebec’s health and social services network. I am well aware of the issues facing people living with dementia, and I am also well informed about the consequences of having a loved one with dementia. I am therefore pleased, if I may say so, to congratulate the member for introducing a private member’s bill on this topic. Basically, we have a lot of questions. We are all in favour of an alert, but we have a lot of questions. The first is that I do not understand how a coordinated system across the country could improve the Quebec system. A former spokesperson for the Montreal police said that there could be up to 12 reports of missing seniors in Montreal every day. I cannot imagine an alarm going off on people’s phones every time a senior is reported missing. I have a lot of questions and I hope that we will be able to discuss them with the member to better understand. I do not know whether she intends to use the same system as the Amber alert. In my opinion, that might not necessarily be appropriate for those with dementia, particularly because people may become desensitized and stop paying attention to such alerts if they start receiving a large number of them on their cellphones. I am asking a lot of questions this evening to try to learn more. As the member from Quebec said, Quebec has been using the Amber alert system since 2019. At that time, Liberal minister Marguerite Blais put a pilot project in place and, because of a recent tragedy in Quebec, the silver alert program rolled out across Quebec in February 2026. On April 17, someone from my riding went out for a drive. When a person has frontotemporal dementia, for example, they may appear to be perfectly capable and functional. They are even capable of driving, but there comes a point when they end up completely lost while driving. The alert was triggered quickly, and in just three or four hours, Ontario police found the person on the road and immediately brought them to safety. This is proof that the Quebec system works very well. It is even a model for several other provinces. Since Quebec and Ontario are neighbours, there is a great deal of co-operation and a long-standing tradition of collaboration, I would say, between the Sûreté du Québec and Ontario police forces to ensure a rapid response. As the member said, in order to locate someone, we need to minimize delays and act quickly. I wonder what a national framework might mean for response times in Quebec and Ontario. I see it creating more complications or adding more red tape that could slow down a system that already works quite well in Quebec. That said, I am willing to speak with the member and with the Bloc Québécois critic for seniors, the member for Shefford, to better understand her intentions. If the goal is to emulate best practices in Ontario and Quebec and encourage other provinces to do more, I would gladly have that discussion, but I still need to be convinced of how this approach would benefit Quebec. There are, after all, organizations that represent many seniors in Quebec. Naturally, they cannot oppose a bill aimed at promoting the well-being of seniors. However, they do have some concerns about the federal government imposing additional requirements. They fear that things will become more complicated. That is what the FADOQ and the AQDR in Quebec have stated quite clearly. I agree with the member. This is not about engaging in a partisan debate between the right and the left. That is not the issue. When things are going well in a province and neither community groups nor police forces are calling for changes to a system that is working, I wonder if this bill a good solution, particularly for Quebec. I remain open to being convinced. Obviously, if the provinces want to adopt a single system, that is their prerogative. It is their decision, and we cannot oppose that. We believe that the provinces are in the best position to implement the criteria to trigger an alert, because they control and coordinate their police and health care systems. Unlike many provinces, Quebec has its own police force, the Sûreté du Québec, which is similar to Ontario’s police force, the OPP. Quebec has developed its own communications practice. Could this collaboration, which has been built by experience, be weakened by adding an additional layer with the goal of creating a national approach? Trying to do so often makes the process more complicated. I am not sure whether the Sûreté du Québec or even the Government of Quebec would be willing to reopen the issue of standards, given that Quebec has just adopted its own. Shortly after they were adopted, we had examples of seniors with dementia being found quickly because the silver alert is truly meant to alert the public. The decision of whether to issue an alert is up to the police force, which would be the Sûreté du Québec in this case. I would love to meet with my colleague from Kildonan—St. Paul so I can understand how this bill would benefit Quebec’s seniors and so we can start a conversation on this issue. She should also understand that, at present, we are neither for nor against her bill. We are more in an exploratory phase, because we feel that the member’s speech, as well as the answers she gave to questions, are not yet comprehensive enough to allow me to continue my deliberations. I would like to congratulate my colleague on introducing this bill, which does address the important need to protect older people and those with dementia who need the wider community to look after them. I invite her to come and discuss this with me and our seniors critic, the member for Shefford, so that we can better understand her intentions and, above all, so that she can reassure us about the model she wishes to develop. The model differs from Amber alerts. As my colleague from Mont-Royal says, we certainly do not want Quebeckers to become desensitized, because they are used to seeing Amber alerts for missing children or very serious disappearances. If we increase the number of alerts, they might think that it is just a false alarm, no big deal, and then they might let their guard down. We want to avoid that at all costs. I invite my colleague to come speak to us and continue the conversation.
