'Barely hanging on': Union says RCMP emergency dispatchers facing retention and recruiting crisis

The union representing RCMP emergency communications specialists says a lack of staff and retention issues are crunching 911 dispatchers to their breaking point.

The union representing RCMP emergency communications specialists says a lack of staff and retention issues are crunching 911 dispatchers to their breaking point.

The Canadian Union of Public Employees says there is a 40 per cent average job vacancy rate at RCMP emergency communication centres across the country.

Kathleen Hipper, CUPE Local 104 president, explained those centres as the nerve centre for a crisis, where calls first reporting an emergency are answered, details are calmly gleaned by operators from those affected, and then officers are dispatched, and if needed, calls for back-up are answered.

In Alberta, the RCMP's K-Division has two operational communications centres: one in Edmonton and another in Red Deer.

Previously, both used to work geographically, with the province divided in half to provide coverage to northern and southern regions. Now, the two "back each other up."

"When one centre gets extremely low, the other centre can help a bit, but what's happening right now is they used to have a comfort level of 14 operators," Hipper said. "Now it's half that."

For Hipper, low staffing means operators are responding to more calls than normal and are pressured to rush through calls as queues lengthen.