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 Edmonton Police Service with a description of a crime in progress.
Will police come to an alarm in Edmonton?
Verified responseIf your alarm is not verified: there is no dispatch. Police require both a multi-zone activation — an exterior breach plus an interior motion alarm — and an attempt by the monitoring company to contact all keyholders and the premises. A single-zone alarm with no call-through does not qualify. Police still respond where a risk to public safety is identified.
What counts as verification
- An exterior breach (door, window or glass-break) plus an interior motion activation — both are required
- An attempted contact of all keyholders and the premises by the monitoring company
- EPS recommends at least three keyholders on file, and calls live video surveillance the most effective verification
False alarm fees
| Residential false alarm | $75 |
| Commercial false alarm, premises up to 500 m² | $100 |
| Commercial false alarm, premises over 500 m²Billed to the permit holder. The first false alarm within 6 months of permit issue is free; a fee unpaid for 60 days cancels the permit. | $150 |
Permit / registration
Required for every operating alarm system: $30 one-time, no renewal. Operating without one is a $300 fine.
When response is cut off
Four false alarms with police attendance in 12 months brings an immediate 3-month suspension. After a second suspension inside 12 months, the permit is not re-issued unless the system has been repaired or modified.
- EPS — Enhanced Call Verification — 2016 policy; EPS found 96% of reported intrusion alarms were false
- EPS — Alarm program fees & fines
- City of Edmonton Bylaw 10922 — Alarm Systems Bylaw
- EPS — Alarm permits
Crime in the Edmonton 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 Edmonton 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 Edmonton
The equipment sits in the industrial ring: Nisku and the airport lands to the south, Acheson to the west, Sherwood Park and the Refinery Row corridor to the east.
Property types
- Industrial yards and laydown sites
- Energy and pipeline service yards
- Construction sites
- Heavy-equipment and truck dealerships
- Distribution and warehouse properties
- Retail and commercial plazas
Areas covered
- Edmonton
- Nisku and the Edmonton International airport lands
- Acheson and Parkland County
- Sherwood Park and Strathcona County
- St. Albert, Spruce Grove and Fort Saskatchewan
What Edmonton’s rules mean for your property
Read Edmonton’s rule closely and it has an odd consequence for yards. Police require an exterior breach — a door, window or glass-break — plus an interior motion activation, along with an attempt to reach every keyholder. A fenced laydown yard in Nisku or Acheson has no interior. There is nothing for the second zone to be. A site like that cannot satisfy the two-zone test however good its alarm is.
Edmonton Police say as much themselves: their own alarm program calls live video surveillance the most effective form of verification. For open-air property in this city, video is not the better option, it is the only one that fits the rule.
The costs are ordinary and the suspension is not. A permit is $30 once, with no renewal, and operating without one is a $300 fine. False alarms run $75 residential, $100 commercial under 500 m² and $150 above it. Four attended false alarms in twelve months brings an immediate three-month suspension of response.
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 Edmonton 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 Edmonton’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 Edmonton Police Service respond to an alarm at my Edmonton property?
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 rule, as the Edmonton Police Service states it and as we retrieved it on August 5, 2026: There is no dispatch. Police require both a multi-zone activation — an exterior breach plus an interior motion alarm — and an attempt by the monitoring company to contact all keyholders and the premises. A single-zone alarm with no call-through does not qualify. Police still respond where a risk to public safety is identified. What counts as verification: an exterior breach (door, window or glass-break) plus an interior motion activation — both are required; an attempted contact of all keyholders and the premises by the monitoring company; ePS recommends at least three keyholders on file, and calls live video surveillance the most effective verification. 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 Edmonton?
$75 (residential false alarm); $100 (commercial false alarm, premises up to 500 m²); $150 (commercial false alarm, premises over 500 m²). Four false alarms with police attendance in 12 months brings an immediate 3-month suspension. After a second suspension inside 12 months, the permit is not re-issued unless the system has been repaired or modified. Those figures were taken from the Edmonton 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 Edmonton?
Required for every operating alarm system: $30 one-time, no renewal. Operating without one is a $300 fine. Every figure here comes from the Edmonton 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 Edmonton 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 Edmonton do you cover?
Edmonton, Nisku and the Edmonton International airport lands, Acheson and Parkland County, Sherwood Park and Strathcona County, St. Albert, Spruce Grove and Fort Saskatchewan. Because operators watch the cameras remotely, coverage does not depend on how far a patrol car has to drive, so sites outside the Edmonton area are handled the same way. Crime figures on this page are Statistics Canada's 2025 police-reported numbers for the Edmonton census metropolitan area.
Alarm rules, fees and permit requirements on this page were retrieved from Edmonton Police Service and City of Edmonton sources on August 5, 2026, and each is linked above. Crime figures are Statistics Canada police-reported data for the Edmonton 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 Edmonton 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 Edmonton 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.