The provincial government says the new emergency alerting system known as 'Alert Ready' is in place. They'll be testing the system today just before 2:00 pm, which includes a tone followed by a message. Manitoba Infrastructure and Transportation Minister Steve Ashton, who's also responsible for emergency measures, was joined by Deputy Minister Lee Spencer and Golden West Radio President Lyndon Friesen to discuss the measures yesterday.

Spencer explains the system will allow for two types of alerts, depending on the urgency of the situation.

"There are two types of alerts. One is the broadcast intrusive alerts, they will be for (situations) that threaten people's lives. They'll be proceeded by the tone and a message. Then there's the non-broadcast intrusive, which will be up to the broadcaster how they deal with it, but the system will disseminate those things for example, for non life-threatening situations such as updates on evacuation warnings or updates on a slow moving flood."

Ashton says they'll be using the intrusive alerts sparingly, in order to ensure they maintain their sense of urgency. However, he notes there have been several incidents over the last few years that would have triggered the system.

"It will be infrequently in a broader sense, but there have been a number of scenarios that we've run into where, absolutely, alerts would have gone out. Obviously there are tornadoes, we can't forget what happened in Elie and much of southern Manitoba a number of years ago with a very significant tornado. We get about 50, 60 or 70 tornadoes a year, not all of which are a particular risk in terms of impact on different areas. There's flooding, 2009, 2011, 2014."

Meanwhile, Friesen says the implementation of Alert Ready supports Golden West's mandate to provide local information. He notes this system will only support the work broadcasters are already doing, and will simply act a starting point for their stations.

"We always like to tell our people, and we like to let our community know that when we get that alert, it's not the last mile, it's the first mile. That's when we get to work and try to help communities and try to be the communication system that gets these really important messages out to communities."

Broadcasters across the country were mandated to have the public alerting system in place by the Canadian Radio Telecommunications Corporation. The Manitoba government indicates this won't be the final step in their emergency plan, with the creation of apps for smart phones also being discussed.