Average time on hold for 911 in Toronto was 1-2 minutes for at least 100 days this year

When Mike McDerment called 911 after spotting a car on fire on a Toronto highway this September, he was put on hold. He watched the time tick by for more than four minutes without an operator picking up.

"This is 911," he said in an interview with CBC Toronto. "I'm reporting something that doesn't look good, but there are emergencies where certainly every second counts." 

After waiting more than four minutes and 23 seconds, McDerment hung up — he said he assumed someone else had called in the car and worried he was "clogging up the lines." 

That day, Sept. 22, the average wait on hold for an emergency call to be answered by Toronto police's 911 communication centre was two minutes and 44 seconds. The longest wait time a caller faced was 10 minutes and 14 seconds, according to an internal service report.

"I would expect a higher standard," said McDerment. "At the end of the day it's a public safety measure of sorts. It's an indication of how well we're all being looked after."

Nearly two years ago, a CBC Toronto investigation revealed how lengthy 911 wait times are more than one-offs in Canada's largest city amid burnout-fuelled staffing shortages.

Since then, a report from Toronto's Auditor General found that call volume and staffing problems were at the heart of call answering delays and the service needed to hire more operators.

But more than a year after releasing that report, wait times on hold for 911 in Toronto have only grown longer and are happening more frequently, according to internal records obtained through Freedom of Information requests.

Year over year, monthly service level reports for June through September show that the average 911 call answering time increased by 44 seconds over three years — from an average wait of 24 seconds in 2021 to one minute and eight seconds this year.

The longest wait time a caller faced for 911 to answer this year (through the end of September) was 12 minutes and 40 seconds on June 3. 

CBC Toronto asked Toronto police why 911 call answering times are still getting worse, whether the service plans to increase the number of 911 operators budgeted to reduce wait times and how many positions are currently vacant at the communication centre. 

The Toronto Police Service did not respond to those questions before publication. Instead, spokesperson Stephanie Sayer pointed to reports with updates on the service's response to the auditor general's recommendations so far. 

In one such report from July, the service noted it had partnered with the Toronto Police Association on a project to review current staffing levels and shift deployment at the call centre. 

Through that partnership, a third-party consulting firm was hired to do the analysis work on new minimum staffing requirements and reviewing staff levels, as recommended by the auditor general.