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, police get a call about a crime someone is watching happen.
What each city requires before police attend
| Metro | Unverified burglar alarm | False alarm fee | Permit | Crime Severity Index |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Toronto | No dispatch unless verified | $130 | None (stations register) | 55.0 |
| Calgary | No dispatch to one-hit alarms | $0–$675 escalating | $15–$20/yr | 61.7 |
| Winnipeg | No dispatch to unverified single-zone | Not published | $32–$43 / 4 yrs | 113.4 |
| Edmonton | No dispatch to single-zone alarms | $75–$150 | $30 one-time | 95.5 |
| Canada | Rules are municipal; there is no national alarm policy | 75.0 | ||
No two of these cities agree. Toronto invoices the monitoring station and suspends response after four false alarms in a year. Calgary will not send a car to a commercial intrusion alarm between 7 a.m. and 5 p.m. at all. Edmonton wants an exterior breach and an interior motion alarm together. Winnipeg wants a person who has seen the crime. One thing satisfies all four, which is a live operator watching the camera.
Video surveillance Toronto
Toronto Police do not dispatch to a burglar alarm on its own. Verification is the difference between a high-priority call and no call at all.
The Toronto rules and what they cost →Video surveillance Calgary
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 Calgary rules and what they cost →Video surveillance Winnipeg
A single-zone activation in Winnipeg gets police only when someone has verified criminal activity. An eyewitness counts; a siren does not.
The Winnipeg rules and what they cost →Video surveillance Edmonton
Edmonton Police require an exterior breach plus an interior motion alarm, and a call-through to every keyholder, before a car is dispatched. One zone tripping is not enough.
The Edmonton rules and what they cost →Where the crime figures actually sit, 2025
| Census metropolitan area | Crime Severity Index | Non-violent index | Incidents per 100,000 | Change since 2024 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Toronto | 55.0 | 48.8 | 3,950 | 7% lower than 2024 |
| Calgary | 61.7 | 59.5 | 5,038 | 3% lower than 2024 |
| Winnipeg | 113.4 | 91.7 | 7,899 | 9% lower than 2024 |
| Edmonton | 95.5 | 90.4 | 7,463 | 7% lower than 2024 |
| Canada | 75.0 | 66.8 | 5,585 | 5% lower than 2024 |
The national index fell 5% in 2025, its second straight annual drop, and most metros fell with it. That is worth knowing before anyone quotes you a fear number. The figure that matters more to a property owner is the clearance rate: Statistics Canada puts the severity-weighted clearance rate for non-violent crime at 26.3% nationally. Most break-ins end with a file, not an arrest.
- 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
What a guard post costs, by province
| Province | Median guard wage | Billed rate | One 24/7 post, a year | Monitoring 8 cameras |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ontario | CA$20.00 | CA$34.31 | CA$300,544 | CA$9,600 |
| Alberta | CA$21.00 | CA$36.02 | CA$315,571 | CA$9,600 |
| Manitoba | CA$18.50 | CA$31.74 | CA$278,003 | CA$9,600 |
The billed rate is the wage plus employer costs (CPP, EI, provincial payroll tax, workers’ compensation, holidays and vacation pay) plus a contractor’s supervision, recruiting, insurance and margin. Monitoring is priced at CA$100 a camera a month for comparison. Change any assumption in the guard cost calculator, which shows its working.
Why the monitoring half is the hard part to buy in Canada
Search for cameras in any Canadian city and you get installers. They mount the hardware, wire the recorder, hand over an app, and the app is where the plan quietly ends. Nobody is watching. A recorder is a witness that only speaks after the fact.
Police services across the country have drawn the same conclusion from their own numbers. Toronto Police measured a 97% false rate across more than 23,000 alarm events a year. Edmonton found 96% of reported intrusion alarms false. York Regional Police put it at 99.5%. So the rules changed: an alarm signal by itself now buys very little, and confirmation buys a priority response. The job of confirming moved to whoever owns the property.
That is the gap these pages are about. A monitored camera with a person behind it does what the bylaws are asking for, and it does something the bylaws never contemplated: it ends most incidents before the police call is needed at all.
Where we work
Operators watch remotely, so coverage does not depend on how far a patrol car has to drive. We monitor properties anywhere in Canada. The four metro pages exist because those cities’ rules differ most sharply from each other, not because coverage stops there.
- Video surveillance Toronto — Etobicoke and the Pearson employment lands, North York and Scarborough, Vaughan, Markham and Richmond Hill, Mississauga and Brampton
- Video surveillance Calgary — The northeast industrial parks and the airport lands, Foothills and Great Plains, Airdrie, Chestermere and Cochrane, Rocky View County
- Video surveillance Winnipeg — CentrePort Canada and the Richardson International airport lands, The St. Boniface and Transcona industrial areas, Headingley, East St. Paul and West St. Paul, Selkirk and Steinbach
- Video surveillance Edmonton — Nisku and the Edmonton International airport lands, Acheson and Parkland County, Sherwood Park and Strathcona County, St. Albert, Spruce Grove and Fort Saskatchewan
Frequently asked questions
What is video surveillance monitoring, and how is it different from installing cameras?
An installer sells you cameras and leaves. Monitoring is the part after that: trained operators watching those cameras live, around the clock, from a monitoring centre. When someone walks onto your property, an operator sees them within seconds, speaks to them through on-site speakers, and calls police with a description of what is happening. The camera records the crime either way. The operator is what stops it.
Do Canadian police still respond to burglar alarms?
Not automatically, and the rule differs by city. Toronto, Calgary, Edmonton and Winnipeg all require some form of verification before an officer is dispatched, and each defines verification differently. Our verified response database sets out the rule, the fee, the permit and the suspension threshold for eight police services, each linked to the bylaw that sets it.
Which cities do you cover in Canada?
We monitor properties across Canada. Toronto, Calgary, Winnipeg, Edmonton have their own pages because those are the metros where the alarm rules differ most sharply, but remote monitoring does not depend on a branch office — the operators watch your cameras wherever the site is.
Will my existing cameras work?
Usually. Most commercial IP cameras and recorders can be connected to our monitoring platform without replacing hardware. If a site has a gap that matters, we price the single camera or speaker that closes it instead of quoting a new system.
How much does remote video monitoring cost in Canada?
Pricing is per camera per month and depends on how many cameras are watched and during which hours. As a benchmark, our guard cost calculator uses $100 per camera per month against Canadian guard wages from Job Bank — a staffed 24/7 guard post costs several times what monitoring the same site costs. Send us the site and we will price it camera by camera.
Is remote video monitoring legal in Canada?
Yes, with conditions that vary by province. Alberta and British Columbia have their own private-sector privacy acts; in Ontario and Manitoba, commercial organizations fall under federal PIPEDA. The consistent requirements are signage, filming your own property, collecting no more than the security purpose needs, and retaining footage no longer than necessary. This is general information, not legal advice.
Alarm rules, fees and permit requirements were retrieved from each police service and municipality on August 5, 2026 and are linked on the city pages. Crime figures are Statistics Canada police-reported data for 2025, released July 22, 2026. Guard costs are modelled from Job Bank’s published provincial wage ranges 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. 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 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 Canadian 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.