January 2024: a citizen of Montreal cannot make himself understood in French while using his phone to contact the firefighters. March 2023: I am experiencing the same situation, and I have to find an ambulance myself to help my partner.
In both cases, the VoIP phone is to blame. It is a telephone communications system that uses the Internet instead of traditional telephone lines. The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) authorized the use of such systems, in one of its bouts of economic liberalism. In other words: the market will regulate itself.
For fifteen years, the CRTC has been informed of the risks this technological drift poses for Francophones. No reaction from the CRTC.
It should be noted that in Quebec, it is not possible to manage a 911 center without authorization from the Ministry of Public Security. There is a specialized working group within the ministry which ensures compliance with the binding standards provided for in the regulations. This is why an English-speaking citizen of Quebec will never suffer a denial of service for linguistic reasons.
Installing a 911 call center outside Quebec allows you not to worry about the certificate from the Ministry of Public Security. Since there are savings to be made this way, telecommunications companies do not hesitate. Not to mention that the usual 911 fees are not billed to VoIP customers, which creates a shortfall for the official network, which will ultimately be more heavily used than for an ordinary 911 call.
Thus, the entire emergency response chain is weakened. The fake 911 used by communications companies that offer VoIP cannot locate you. If you are unable to speak, emergency services will be directed to the billing address. However, the billing address is not necessarily that of the residence. Here, both English and French speakers are in the same boat. There are documented cases exposed to the CRTC. Which didn’t raise any eyebrows.
The strange idea that dictates the CRTC’s behavior is that the market purges itself of companies that provide poor service. Whether you pay the price because you are French-speaking doesn’t matter.
For several years, the CRTC has been trying to plug the holes it has created in the Canadian emergency call network. However, the matter is getting off to a rather bad start, to the extent that the CRTC refuses any limitation of technologies. Currently, with VoIP, a 911 call center can be in any country in the world, outside the area regulated by the CRTC and the provinces. In addition, VoIP calls are incompatible with the call tracking systems that official 911 centers have purchased at high cost.
Currently in the corridors of the CRTC a discreet battle is being waged where Quebec is trying to maintain and safeguard its powers in terms of emergency response. The federal government would like to use technology to create a centralized pan-Canadian emergency call management network. For the moment, the CRTC is mired in its liberal economic ideology which assumes non-intervention in the markets. So any company can set up a low-cost 911 call center anywhere in the world without having to worry about the CRTC’s ambitions.
For more than fifteen years, francophones in Quebec, and only them, have not had the right to personal security because the CRTC refuses to consider the repercussions of its policies.
Would collective action be appropriate in the circumstances? We will know soon.