By Jody Garlock
Early in her career with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), Josée Melanson realized that having a strong sense of urgency is essential in missing child cases. It’s an urgency she now thrives on. About six months into her job as a patrol officer in the northeast province of Newfoundland and Labrador, Melanson responded to a call from a frantic mother who had reported her young son missing.
As Melanson and ther officers ran in search of the child, she saw a dumpster in her periphery. Drawing on her training, she stopped. The boy was next to the trash receptacle, hiding and scared from hearing his name being yelled by unfamiliar voices.
“That was one of my success stories I’ll never forget,” Melanson says. That feeling of franticness related to having a lost child “is very different from the other types of calls we received,” she says.
After 13 years as a patrol officer (also known as a General Duty member on patrol) and five years at the RCMP Training Academy, Melanson shifted to a position with RCMP’s National Centre for Missing Persons and Unidentified Remains (NCMPUR), headquartered in Ottawa, Ontario. For the past two years, she has coordinated NCMPUR’s National AMBER Alert Working Group, comprised of AMBER Alert Coordinators from provincial law enforcement agencies across Canada.
Melanson’s work is a critical component of the AMBER Alert Training & Technical Assistance Program’s (AATTAP) Northern Border Initiative, which formalizes the long-standing cooperation between the two nations. We spoke with Corporal Melanson about her transition from patrol officer to national coordinator, the structure of Canada’s AMBER Alert system, and why international partnership is non-negotiable when a child’s life is on the line.
After being on patrol for more than a decade, how has it been settling into your role at NCMPUR?
One of the positive experiences with the RCMP is that you can work in different units, and this one is very different from what I did as a patrol member. I don’t have a police car here. I don’t wear my full uniform every day. It was definitely an inviting change—I could focus on the unit here. I’ve learned a lot and am still learning. I find as a police officer, it’s important to challenge yourself and learn every day. That’s what keeps my drive going.
Do you have the chance to work with AMBER Alert associates in the United States?
In my current position as the chair of the National Amber Alert Working Group (NAAWG), my role is focused on gathering training opportunities and best practices from our U.S. associates. Once we communicate about that, I share the information with AMBER Alert Coordinators here in Canada.
What type of work does NAAWG do?
First, we’re not involved in investigations. One of our mandates is to facilitate an information exchange—and providing training opportunities for members here and support for AMBER Alert conferences. We meet virtually at least twice a year. We had one of our recent NAAWG meetings where we discussed courses that are available through the National Criminal Justice Training Center (NCJTC) at Fox Valley Technical College (FVTC) to AMBER Alert Coordinators in Canada.
What about your AMBER Alert program—how is it structured?
In Canada, each province develops its AMBER Alert program independently, and the provincial committees have developed criteria to respond to the needs of their jurisdictions. Each province appoints an AMBER Alert Coordinator to oversee the program and each province has its set criteria. We will be made aware that an AMBER Alert has been issued, but it is the provinces—the coordinators— that take full responsibility of it. Here at the National Center, we’ll maintain and collect statistics on issued AMBER Alerts.
Tell us a bit about those statistics.
In 2024, there were eight total activations of AMBER Alerts in Canada. All of the 10 children involved were located safe and sound. In the first six months of 2025, two AMBER Alerts have been issued, with a total of four children involved. And again, all four children were found safe.
That’s impressive. How does 100 percent success make you feel?
Amazing. It’s a great day at work, right?— for all police officers throughout Canada. You feel the urgency when you know all the criteria are met and the AMBER Alert is issued. And then once the children are located, it’s a very powerful feeling.
What are your thoughts on cross-border collaboration via the AATTAP’s Northern Border Initiative?
I feel it’s crucial to have that, especially for the effectiveness of AMBER Alerts here in Canada. Since I’ve been in the unit for the past two years, Canada and the United States have established partnerships, making it easier to work together, share information, and coordinate efforts when it is believed that a child has been abducted across our borders. All the information and the training that we can see from [AATTAP and FVTC’s NCJTC]—and me sharing that with the AMBER Alert Coordinators in Canada and with the NCMPUR team as well—is very beneficial.
AATTAP's Northern Border Initiative: What is it and what's ahead?
Child protection officials in the U.S. and Canada have had a longstanding working relationship. The Northern Border Initiative of the AMBER Alert Training & Technical Assistance Program (AATTAP) formalizes that as it focuses on strengthening preparedness for effective response to child abduction cases.
The collaboration, which is between northern states and Canada’s southern provinces, parallels AATTAP’s Southern Border Initiative with Mexico.
Yesenia “Jesi” Leon-Baron, Project Coordinator for International and Territorial Programs at AATTAP, says that partnering with Canada’s National AMBER Alert Working Group has helped pinpoint areas to address, such as additional training on alert activations that involve cross-border abductions. “Together, we’re building an understanding of Canada’s AMBER Alert coordination while developing training and technical assistance,” she says.
A virtual tri-national meeting with respective AMBER Alert Coordinators from Canada, Mexico, and the U.S. is being planned, likely for 2026.
The one-day training would cover topics such as initial investigative responses and how the AMBER Alert system works in each country.
“Child abduction knows no borders,” Leon-Baron says. “Evil doesn’t discriminate, and it’s not going to worry about borders either. So we need to make sure we are supporting each country’s investigations when it comes to abducted children. We can be a force multiplier.”