As the Toronto Police Service (TPS) continues to address ongoing issues with longer wait times to get through to 911, authorities say a new digital communications centre system rolled out on Thursday can potentially reduce delays.
Dubbed next-generation 911 (NG911), all 911 communications centres are being required by the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) to switch over to digital services by 2027, as old analog infrastructure can’t keep up with current needs.
CityNews recently was given a behind-the-scenes tour at the Toronto police 911 communications centre to see the new system before it came online Thursday morning.
“It was kind of broken in the sense that we couldn’t support it any longer. There [are] no technicians around that use that kind of technology,” Colin Stairs, the service’s chief transformation officer, told CityNews while explaining the upgrades.
“Remember the old phone that was on your kitchen wall with a big, long coil, and you had to walk that handset around the kitchen? That’s kind of what we’re moving away from, copper wire kind of technology, and we’re moving towards technology which is more like your iPhone.”
The initial use of NG911 in Toronto will involve the use of automated text messages to conduct an initial call-back if there is a sudden disconnection.
Callers who disconnect from 911 can expect to receive a text message asking them to respond with a ‘1’ if they still need to speak with a call-taker and ‘9’ if they do not. If they press ‘1’, they will be connected with someone.
“We’re asking that if you don’t have an emergency, please text back nine that will clear the call from queue and create more time for operators to respond to people with actual emergencies versus those pocket dials, misdials,” emergency voice services coordinator Sarah Mardus said.
She emphasized the system currently can’t recognize anything other than ‘1’ or ‘9’ in terms of a text response. If someone doesn’t speak English or can’t respond, there is redundancy built in.
“If the text does time out and we don’t receive a response from you within a set amount of time, an operator is going to call you back either way to confirm whether or not you have an emergency,” she said, noting translators or other authorities can be brought in once that live connection is made.
Currently, call takers must try to get in contact with every phone call that makes it through to their centre — taking precious time away from responding to other issues coming in.
“Twenty-seven per cent of our calls are dialled improperly or aren’t intended to call 911, and so we still have to respond to all those, and that takes about 30 hours a day of staffing,” Stairs said.
“This technology is going to free up those 30 hours, and that’s going to put us back to answering calls as quickly as we can.”
When asked about the capability to send text images and images to 911, Stairs said that’s something they’re looking to take advantage of in the future.
In October, officials launched an awareness campaign aimed at redirecting calls from 911.
CityNews previously reported on lengthy instances where people have been stuck waiting to speak with call-takers. In late 2024, there was a day when wait times were just shy of 11 minutes and 45 seconds for a period of time.
During the demonstration CityNews received, it took approximately two minutes and 20 seconds to get through to 911. However, wait times can fluctuate quickly if there are sudden surges. Approximately 15 minutes later there were no calls in the queue when we followed up.
After analyzing data between 2018 and 2021, the Toronto auditor general’s office found the police service on average didn’t meet the National Emergency Number Association (NENA)‘s standard of answering 90 per cent of 911 calls within 15 seconds and 95 per cent of calls within 20 seconds. They said call volume and staffing levels were the two biggest factors. They also noted many other jurisdictions had difficulties, too.
The report said the average answer time in the three-year period was 28 seconds, and the peak times were between 10 a.m. and 10 p.m. However, in the years following that average increased.
The average wait time in April was 58 seconds.
The service receives approximately 1.8 million calls yearly, with a large majority going to 911 versus the non-emergency number.
