Detection
Analytics on your existing cameras flag a person on the property, not a raccoon.
A person looks
An operator is live on the feed in under 30 seconds and decides what it is.
Talk-down
They speak through your on-site speakers and describe what the person is wearing. Most leave.
Verified call
If they stay, the operator calls Calgary Police Service with a description of a crime in progress.
Will police come to an alarm in Calgary?
Verified responseIf your alarm is not verified: Calgary 9-1-1 does not dispatch police to single-zone (“one-hit”) activations, to systems without a valid permit, or to commercial intrusion alarms between 7 a.m. and 5 p.m., any day of the week. The monitoring company may not even notify police of an activation on an unpermitted system.
What counts as verification
- Enhanced call verification — the alarm company attempted at least two keyholders first
- Verification by a guard service
- More than one zone activated within 30 minutes
- Confirmation of a valid offence by the owner or a keyholder
False alarm fees
| 1st false alarm in 12 months | $0 |
| 2nd | $75 |
| 3rd | $150 |
| Each additional, escalatingBilled to the alarm agency that requested dispatch — “penalties are not re-directed” | +$75, capped at $675 |
Permit / registration
Required: $15/year residential, $20/year commercial (no GST), renewed annually. Applications need two non-resident keyholders able to attend within 30 minutes, or a guard service.
When response is cut off
Three or more false alarms in 12 months counts as “excessive” and the permit may be suspended or revoked at the Chief’s discretion. During a suspension a private first responder must attend first; police come only if that responder finds criminal activity.
- CPS — Responding to Alarms and False Alarms
- CPS — Alarm Agency Information Package — dispatch criteria, penalty table and the May 15, 2016 one-hit rule
- City of Calgary Bylaw 31M95 (office consolidation)
- CPS — Alarm Permit Information
Crime in the Calgary area, 2025
The clearance figure is the one worth sitting with. It weights crimes by severity rather than counting files, so it is not a simple percentage of break-ins solved, but the shape of it is clear enough: most property crime in the Calgary area is never cleared. Recording an intruder gives you footage of a crime that mostly will not be solved. Interrupting one while it happens gives you your property.
- Statistics Canada — Police-reported Crime Severity Index and crime rate, by census metropolitan area, 2025 — The Daily, released July 22, 2026
- Statistics Canada — Table 35-10-0026-01, Crime severity index and weighted clearance rates — violent and non-violent index values and weighted clearance rates
- Statistics Canada — Table 35-10-0177-01, Incident-based crime statistics — the crime rate per 100,000 population
A guard post against monitoring, in Alberta
The guard figure is built, not asserted: CA$21.00 an hour in wage, plus employer costs — CPP, EI, provincial payroll tax, workers’ compensation, statutory holidays and vacation pay — plus a contractor’s supervision, recruiting, insurance and margin, which brings the billed rate to CA$36.02. Around the clock, that is 8,760 hours a year and 4.2 full-time positions to cover. At the low and high ends of Job Bank’s published Alberta range the same post costs CA$259,219 to CA$571,034. One guard also watches one place at a time, which is the part the arithmetic misses.
Every assumption above is adjustable in the guard cost calculator, which shows its working and cites its sources.
What we watch around Calgary
Calgary’s industrial property runs through the northeast around the airport, out to Foothills and Great Plains in the southeast, and into the county laydown yards that serve the energy trade.
Property types
- Industrial parks and laydown yards
- Energy service and equipment yards
- Construction sites
- Auto and heavy-equipment dealerships
- Retail plazas
- Self-storage and fleet compounds
Areas covered
- Calgary
- The northeast industrial parks and the airport lands
- Foothills and Great Plains
- Airdrie, Chestermere and Cochrane
- Rocky View County
What Calgary’s rules mean for your property
Calgary has a carve-out that catches commercial owners by surprise: between 7 a.m. and 5 p.m., any day of the week, an intrusion alarm at a commercial address does not get a police car. Not a slower response. No dispatch. A break-in at your northeast warehouse at two in the afternoon is yours to deal with, and the alarm panel has no way to tell anyone what is happening.
Daytime is also when a yard is most exposed, because the gate is open and a truck pulling in looks like every other truck. An operator watching the camera can tell the difference between a delivery and a theft, and can say so out loud through the speakers while it is happening.
The permit rules bite too. Calgary requires a $15 residential or $20 commercial permit every year, and a monitoring company may not even notify police of an activation on an unpermitted system. False alarms escalate from $0 to $675, billed to the alarm agency that asked for the car, and three in twelve months is enough for the Chief to suspend the permit outright.
What the operator does at 3 a.m.
An alert comes in from your yard. The operator pulls up the camera, sees a man walking the fence line toward the equipment, and speaks to him through the speaker on the pole: describes his jacket, tells him he is on camera at your address, tells him police are being called. Most people leave at that point, before anything is loaded into a truck.
If he stays, the call to Calgary Police Service is a different kind of call than an alarm panel makes. Someone is watching a crime in progress and can describe the person, the vehicle and the direction of travel while the officer is driving. That is what Calgary’s rules are asking for, and it is what an unattended siren cannot give them.
Every incident leaves a clip and a written report, which matters later for insurance and for the trespass file. How remote guarding works covers the full sequence.
One Canadian thing worth checking before you count on the cameras you already own: Ottawa ordered Hikvision to wind up its Canadian business in June 2025, and a long list of budget brands sell Hikvision or Dahua hardware under their own label. Our banned camera checker gives the status of 34 brands and what it means for support. We can still watch that equipment — but nobody in Canada can service it.
Frequently asked questions
Will Calgary Police Service respond to an alarm at my Calgary property?
Calgary 9-1-1 does not dispatch to a single-zone alarm, to an unpermitted system, or to a commercial intrusion alarm between 7 a.m. and 5 p.m. on any day of the week. The rule, as the Calgary Police Service states it and as we retrieved it on August 5, 2026: Calgary 9-1-1 does not dispatch police to single-zone (“one-hit”) activations, to systems without a valid permit, or to commercial intrusion alarms between 7 a.m. and 5 p.m., any day of the week. The monitoring company may not even notify police of an activation on an unpermitted system. What counts as verification: enhanced call verification — the alarm company attempted at least two keyholders first; verification by a guard service; more than one zone activated within 30 minutes; confirmation of a valid offence by the owner or a keyholder. A live operator watching the camera produces the video confirmation those rules ask for, which is what changes the answer.
What does a false alarm cost in Calgary?
$0 (1st false alarm in 12 months); $75 (2nd); $150 (3rd); +$75, capped at $675 (each additional, escalating). Three or more false alarms in 12 months counts as “excessive” and the permit may be suspended or revoked at the Chief’s discretion. During a suspension a private first responder must attend first; police come only if that responder finds criminal activity. Those figures were taken from the Calgary Police Service and the municipal bylaw on August 5, 2026; the linked source governs if it has since changed.
Do I need an alarm permit in Calgary?
Required: $15/year residential, $20/year commercial (no GST), renewed annually. Applications need two non-resident keyholders able to attend within 30 minutes, or a guard service. Every figure here comes from the Calgary Police Service or the city bylaw, retrieved August 5, 2026.
Do I need new cameras, or will mine work?
Most existing IP cameras work as they are. Our operators connect to the cameras and the recorder already on site, so the usual cost is the monitoring service, not a rip-and-replace. Where a site has a blind spot that matters, we say so and price the one camera that fixes it rather than quoting a whole system.
What does this cost against a security guard in Alberta?
One guard post staffed around the clock in Alberta runs about CA$315,571 a year at the province's median guard wage of CA$21.00 an hour, once employer costs, supervision and contractor overhead are added. Monitoring 8 cameras at CA$100 a camera a month is about CA$9,600 a year. The wage figures are Job Bank's published range for Alberta; you can change every assumption in our guard cost calculator and watch the number move.
How quickly does an operator respond?
Under 30 seconds on average, from the moment the analytics flag someone on the property to a live operator watching the feed. The operator then speaks to the person through the on-site speakers, and calls police with a description of what they can see if the person stays.
Does this replace my alarm company?
No. Keep your alarm and your alarm company. Video monitoring sits alongside them and supplies the thing the alarm on its own cannot: someone who has seen what is happening. In Calgary that distinction is the whole difference between a call police prioritise and a call they may not attend at all.
Is video surveillance of a commercial property legal in Alberta?
Yes, with conditions. Commercial video surveillance in Alberta falls under Alberta’s Personal Information Protection Act (PIPA), overseen by the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Alberta. The practical requirements are consistent: film your own property, put up signage that says the area is under surveillance, collect no more than the security purpose needs, and keep recordings only as long as you need them. Employee monitoring carries extra obligations. This is general information, not legal advice.
What areas around Calgary do you cover?
Calgary, The northeast industrial parks and the airport lands, Foothills and Great Plains, Airdrie, Chestermere and Cochrane, Rocky View County. Because operators watch the cameras remotely, coverage does not depend on how far a patrol car has to drive, so sites outside the Calgary area are handled the same way. Crime figures on this page are Statistics Canada's 2025 police-reported numbers for the Calgary census metropolitan area.
Alarm rules, fees and permit requirements on this page were retrieved from Calgary Police Service and City of Calgary sources on August 5, 2026, and each is linked above. Crime figures are Statistics Canada police-reported data for the Calgary census metropolitan area, reference year 2025. Guard costs are calculated from Job Bank’s published Alberta wage range and are a market model, not a Blinkless quote. Bylaws and fee schedules change: the linked source governs, and if you find a figure out of date, tell us and we will correct it. This page is general information about municipal alarm rules, not legal advice.
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Lay the cameras out before you ask what it costs
Our camera planner opens a satellite view of your Calgary property and lets you put cameras and talk-down speakers exactly where they would go — the gate, the yard, the loading doors. Aim each one and it shows you how far that camera can recognise a face rather than merely notice movement, and how far the speaker still carries.
Most quotes in this industry are guesses because nobody has looked at the property yet. Spend ten minutes in the planner and the numbers below stop being guesses: tell us the layout you built and the price comes back against that, camera by camera.
- Find the property. Type the address and the map lands on the roof.
- Place the devices. Drop up to eight cameras and four speakers, aim them, set the lens and the resolution.
- Check the coverage. Each cone shades into what it can identify, detect or merely see, with a Street View preview from the camera’s own position.
- Send it to us. Your layout saves in the browser. Describe it in the form below and we quote monitoring for that plan.
Get a quote for your Calgary property
Tell us what the site is and how many cameras are on it. You get camera-by-camera coverage and a monthly price, not a brochure. Existing cameras usually work as they are.