What a False Alarm Actually Costs Around Here

The Town repealed its Security Alarm By-law at the end of 2022 and stopped processing alarm registrations on 1 January 2023. If you were told to register your alarm with police here, that advice is out of date.

False alarms that result in an OPP dispatch now carry fees set under the Town's Fees and Charges By-law. At the time of writing that is $300 for a first occurrence, $400 for a second occurrence in the same calendar year, and $600 for a third and each subsequent occurrence in the same calendar year. That schedule is reviewed every year, so check the current by-law rather than trusting this page.

There is no alarm registration programme in Collingwood and no OPP false alarm fee in the Town's fee schedule. Fire is a different story.

Collingwood's Fees and Service Charges schedule charges a false alarm or nuisance call fee after two alarms caused by a controllable factor within a twelve month period, applied to each subsequent incident in that window. There is a separate charge when no keyholder responds or no keyholder is available within sixty minutes and the Fire Department has to reset and restore the panel, another for an unauthorized panel reset, and full cost recovery when the building has to go on fire watch because nobody could restore it. Figures are set annually in that schedule.

That keyholder clause is the one that hits seasonal owners. A chalet used nine weekends a year, owned by someone living hours away, cannot produce a person at the door in sixty minutes. There is no version of that where willingness is the issue.

We are not a keyholder and we do not have guards on staff, so we cannot attend your property inside an hour to restore a panel. That role belongs to a local caretaker, a neighbour or a property management company, and it is worth arranging before you need it.

What we can do is make far fewer of those calls happen. Remote video verification through the monitoring station tells you and an operator whether something is real before anyone drives anywhere. Remote reset capability, a properly supervised communication path and a system that is not tripping on its own account for most of the rest. The sixty minute fee is charged when Fire has to restore a panel. The cheapest way to avoid it is a panel that did not trip.

It is not carelessness. It is a set of conditions most systems are not designed for.

Wireless sensor batteries fail faster in a room held at minimum heat from November to April, and they fail as faults and trips rather than quietly. Contractors and cleaners arrive on schedules the panel does not know about, usually on a shared code nobody has changed in two years. Forced air moves blinds and curtains across motion sensors. Insects and cobwebs sit on lenses in properties that go weeks without anyone walking through.

The Town of The Blue Mountains publishes its own prevention guidance and it says much the same thing, including keeping pets, cobwebs, curtains, plants and fans clear of motion sensors, setting a reasonable arming delay, and keeping keyholder information current with your provider.

It compounds, though not in the way you might assume. A false alarm is not a conviction and it does not put demerit points on a licence by itself. What it does is cost money and draw attention, and attention is what turns an unnoticed problem into an inspection. In The Blue Mountains, a conviction under the Fire Protection and Prevention Act against a licensed property carries fifteen demerit points, which is past the suspension threshold and is the number the by-law also uses as a ground for refusing a licence. A system that trips constantly is not the cause of that, but it is a reliable way to be looked at.

More on systems for properties that sit empty, including licensed rentals, is on the cottage security page.