Premier presses Bell Canada about ‘unacceptable’ 911 outages

Premier Wab Kinew expressed concern over the province's 911 service outages, urging Bell Canada to assist. Kinew stated that when dialing 911, emergency services must arrive swiftly. An hours-long outage on July 22 prevented 89 911 calls from reaching the Brandon public safety answering point, while backup systems also encountered issues after a third party severed a cable during construction, according to Bell Canada.

The premier called the 911 outage "unacceptable" and reported that Prime Minister Mark Carney promised to raise the issue with telecom executives. Premier Kinew discussed the matter with Bell Canada's president and CEO, Mirko Bibic, who attributed the most recent outage to a cable damage during construction. Kinew sought a technical solution to prevent future outages until a long-term replacement of legacy systems with next-generation 911 services is implemented by 2027.

The union representing Bell MTS technicians blamed service and maintenance cuts for the outages, citing a reduction in workforce from 700 to 440 members. The union's representative, Richard Ferris, emphasized the need for more personnel on the ground. The Innovation and New Technology Minister, Mike Moroz, has raised concerns with his federal counterpart, with the latter promising to take action to ensure uninterrupted access to emergency services for Manitobans.