STEPHEN RICCIO
PONTIAC July 29, 2020
When a Luskville house fire on July 7 triggered residents’ 911 calls, a transfer to Ontario dispatchers caused there to be a four-minute delay before . . .
Municipality of Pontiac (MoP) firefighters were dispatched to the scene.
It is a phenomenon that has been common throughout certain areas in both the municipality and the MRC de Pontiac for some time.
Mayor Joanne Labadie spoke to The Equity regarding the delay that occurred, an issue that she said is caused by a lack of quality cell towers in the region.
“For those people who live in that little area, there’s some cell towers on the Ontario side that will pick it up,” Labadie explained. “So [the calls] bounce to the closest or strongest tower and then those 911 calls get picked up by the City of Ottawa 911 dispatch, and they direct it to Gatineau, and then Gatineau will direct it to 911.”
The solution is largely out of the hands of the municipality as cell towers are owned and operated by the private telecom sector, and regulation of them falls on the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission.
“It’s my understanding that if we had a cell tower in this area, that would be stronger or closer than the one on the Ontario side, then it would get picked up by the cell tower on this side and then bounced accordingly to the appropriate 911 service,” Labadie said.
The current process for calls that are directed to Ontario dispatchers requires that they ask the residents where they are calling from. If the resident is in MRC de Pontiac, MRC Vallée de la Gatineau, MRC de Papineau or MRC des Collines, then the dispatcher transfers the call to the MRC des Collines 911 dispatch that serves those four MRCs.
Labadie revealed that a report is being done on the July 7 fire to identify the details around which residents’ 911 calls were sent to Ontario. Once that report is completed, Labadie intends to bring this issue to Pontiac MP Will Amos.
“Deputy Will Amos has been very vocal in his two mandates about high speed internet in the area and throughout the Pontiac and his riding but here’s a situation where we need better cell service for public safety issues,” Labadie said.
Officials in the MRC de Pontiac have also been in discussion with both Amos and MNA André Fortin over the past several years in hopes of solving the issue.
Julien Gagnon, fire and public safety coordinator for the MRC, said that residents around L’Isle aux Allumettes, Chichester, Sheenboro, Chapeau, Campbell’s Bay, Sand Bay and Norway Bay, to name a few, have had similar experiences of speaking to Ontario dispatchers upon dialing 911. He added that the issue was far worse prior to 2016.
At that time, a resident from MRC de Papineau had called 911 because his house was on fire. His call got redirected to an Ontario dispatcher where they essentially told him that they could not assist Quebec.
“So it kind of caused a massive outrage on this side of the river for obvious reasons,” Gagnon said. “I attended some meetings with the City of Ottawa, City of Gatineau and the surrounding areas on both sides with the 911 call centres to ensure that these calls never get dropped.”
While they were successful in enacting a protocol that ensures Quebec residents have their calls transferred immediately, Gagnon is skeptical of the idea of a future where there would be no need for those transfers.
“The only way to fix that would be to have better towers on this side of the river, and we’ve asked [telecommunication companies] for years and years at the MRC here to try and do that,” Gagnon said. “The telecommunication companies just don’t think it’s worth their dollars to invest with the low population.”
“We’ve pushed as far as we can up the line through the government, but it just doesn’t seem to get anywhere,” Gagnon said, when asked to what extent the MRC has worked with both Fortin and Amos.
According to Gagnon, the usual transfer delay for residents when their calls get bounced to Ontario is one to two minutes.
He said that he is not aware of any situations where there was an injury or loss of life because of delayed transfers, but he has heard stories of people being very frustrated after extended wait times.
While no one was in a position of danger that required immediate assistance in the July 7 house fire, Labadie pointed out that the four-minute delay that took place could allow for more serious consequences in other contexts.
“If you’ve got somebody who is suffering a medical emergency, or if there’s a fire where rescue needs to happen, then every second counts, and so it’s important for us to understand exactly what happened,” Labadie said.
