Problems related to calls to 911 via IP telephony, reported The duty last spring, persist. A Montreal resident recently encountered a unilingual English-speaking person when he dialed the emergency line.
The story appeared Monday in The Press is similar to that which occurred in March in Saint-Jean-Port-Joli reported by The duty. The person who answered the 911 call was in Ontario and was not able to speak or even understand French.
IP telephony services are connected to a local Internet network and use an IP communication protocol. However, not all companies that offer this type of service transfer calls directly to the nearest emergency center.
However, the Trudeau government committed to resolving the problem last spring. “This is unacceptable and we will act to correct the situation,” declared the Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry, François-Philippe Champagne.
In the CRTC courtyard
Ten months later, the persistence of the problem is “unacceptable”, according to Quebec Solidaire (QS) MP Ruba Ghazal, who reacted in a press release on Monday. “It could have had very serious consequences,” she argued. “I ask François Bonnardel [le ministre de la Sécurité publique] to formally commit that this sad incident will be the last. »
In this matter, the government of Quebec is passing the buck to Ottawa since it is the federal government which manages the regulation of IP telephony via the Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC).
The organization, which has been aware of the problem since at least 2013, had indicated to Duty in the spring that he would launch “soon” a public consultation “on the measures to be taken to facilitate calls to 911 from multi-line telephone systems which […] do not contain location information.
According to QS, the Quebec government should repatriate the powers of the CRTC to Quebec “to no longer depend on Ottawa” in these matters.
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