Petition for Indigo Alert surpasses 10,000 signatures in House of Commons

A parliamentary petition calling for a new emergency alert system for vulnerable missing children has surpassed 10,000 signatures, crossing a threshold that triggers a formal government response.

The petition, e-7703, was sponsored in the House of Commons last month by Mike Lake, the Leduc-Wetaskiwin MP and father of an autistic child. It grew from a change.org campaign launched by Jennifer Ball, a Calgary mother of an autistic child, which itself garnered more than 42,000 signatures.

The Indigo Alert would expand emergency notifications beyond the current Amber Alert system to cover vulnerable or at-risk people, including neurodivergent children, even when abduction isn't suspected. The push follows the death of 11-year-old Parker Wells, who went missing in July and was found dead nearly two weeks later in a stormwater tunnel. His disappearance initially didn't meet Amber Alert criteria because he wasn't believed to have been abducted, though an exception was made two days after he vanished.

"It's rare that there's something that's being brought up that everyone agrees on," Ball said. "Parker isn't the first. I hope he's the last. But there's been many children that have fallen into this gap before, and I think Parker just kind of became the catalyst of, 'We can't let this happen again.'"

Support for the petition spans multiple political parties, with Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre—also a father of an autistic child—and Lake penning a letter of support in July calling for reform to the existing alert system. The Autism Alliance of Canada has also backed the initiative.

Ball framed the path forward as a two-stage process: first securing the mandate federally, then bringing it into the provinces. "The House of Commons petition is what will hopefully change legislation and create a new alert," she said. "Once the mandate is in federally, we can then bring it into the provinces."