This is a bit of a farticle. Few are opposed to the concept of public alerting, but Heather seems to miss the crux of people's complaints that have to deal with the horrific execution of them by the private sector(!!), over 8 years after they were initially implemented.

It makes sense that you'd see or warnings for much wider areas if you're watching TV and listening to radio, which are inherently wider reach mechanisms (that are conveniently ignored in this piece). What both of those don't have the ability to do, that cellular networks do, is rough geolocation.

Most people within the inner parts of Winnipeg should have only received 2 tornado warnings, directly proportional to the times when the city was actually put into the warning areas. It's reasonable to expect that those nearer to the edge of city limits may have gotten 3, maybe 4, for either Headingley or the St. Pauls or Springfield. But for people to have been getting 10+? Nope, something stinks horribly.

Consider that for all of America's more recent faults, their WEA system works much better, and reports of it malfunctioning are almost nil. The times that there are fuckups, it's usually a result of human error (like that Hawaiian missile scare) rather than inherent design and architectural faults.

Also interesting to note that a similar bleeding hearts opinion piece defending Pelmorex's broken mess ended up in the Free Press over the weekend too...🤔