Time on hold for 911 in Toronto dropped this year, after average of nearly 1 minute wait in 2023
CBC
Average wait times on hold for a 911 operator in Toronto went down in the first half of this year after climbing to the longest average wait in at least five years in 2023.
Last year the average wait for an emergency call to be answered was 58 seconds.
From January through the end of June that average dropped to 37 seconds but still fell short of meeting the industry standard every day but one, according to internal reports obtained by CBC Toronto through a Freedom of Information request.
A small drop in call volume and better staffing numbers are largely responsible for that improvement, according to Toronto Police Communications Services, which answers all 911 calls for the city.
"Staffing has the greatest impact," said manager Kerry Murray-Bates. "We have had two staffing reviews done in the past five years — both indicate we need more staffing based on the call volume."
The National Emergency Association (NENA) has set the industry standard of answering 90 per cent of calls within 15 seconds.
To get the Toronto communications centre to where it can regularly hit that target, Murray-Bates says staffing needs to increase to match the workload.
"It's all dependent on our police budget," she said. "We are one of many units that is vying for those budget dollars in order to make that come to fruition."
In January 2022, a CBC Toronto investigation revealed how long wait times on hold for 911 were more than one-offs in Canada's largest city amid burnout-fuelled staffing shortages. Later the same year, a report from Toronto's Auditor General found that staffing problems and call volume were at the heart of call-answering delays and said the service needed to hire more operators.
Despite those findings, internal reports obtained by CBC Toronto show average wait times continued getting longer until this year.
Murray-Bates attributes the longer wait times in part to significant hiring and training efforts over the last few years.
New call operators undergo 18 months of training. In 2022, the communication centre hired 68 call operators to fill vacancies and then another 53 in 2023.
"The more training we do, the more people I have to take off the phones," said Murray-Bates. "It's a double-edged sword. You gotta do it — these are the best people to do the training — but it impacts the staffing on the floor."
Current staffing will hit the budgeted capacity of around 300 call takers and dispatchers when the 32 people set to begin training next month are hired, according to Murray-Bates.
