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Caught on camera: Man chases dangerous driver after 911 puts him on hold – CBC.ca

Published

5 years ago

January 19, 2020

Sam Gill says he had a knot in his stomach as he watched a driver in front of him barrelling down a busy road in Mississauga, Ont., weaving in and out of oncoming traffic, jumping a curb and hitting a snowbank so hard the impact knocked his headlight off, though that didn’t stop him.

When Gill dialled 911 for help, he was put on hold.

Just before 8 p.m. on a Sunday last month, Gill spotted the other motorist “driving erratically — can’t stay in his lanes, can’t maintain control of the vehicle.”

“Every second that passed, I’m thinking, ‘Oh my god, somebody is going to die,” he said.

Canadians make an estimated nine million calls to 911 every year, taking for granted that someone will answer, says Holly Barkwell, the Canadian region director of the National Emergency Number Association (NENA), an international organization that works to improve 911 service.

“Unfortunately, that is not the case everywhere across Canada,” she says. In reality, Barkwell says, the 911 system might not work as expected because it’s fragmented, underfunded and operating on technology that’s over 50 years old.

“It’s been ignored too long. It’s an issue of public safety.”

There are no mandatory standards in Canada, but voluntary standards set by NENA in 2006 say 90 per cent of 911 calls should be answered within 10 seconds, and 95 per cent within 20 seconds.

But because there is no national oversight on 911 service, there’s no way to tell how Canada measures up.

In Gill’s case, he was on hold for almost six minutes (his phone was hands-free) while he chased the dangerous driver — honking and flashing his lights, trying to warn others to steer clear.

“At this point I’m saying to myself … if [911] doesn’t answer, should I push him off the road? I might hurt him in the process, but I might save his life and potentially the lives of others,” he said.

Peel Regional Police, which runs the 911 service in Gill’s area, says it was swamped with double the usual number of calls at the time, adding it had a “record number” of calls in 2019, though an exact number wasn’t available.

Sam Gill, worried for the safety of others, followed a dangerous driver through busy Mississauga, Ont., streets while waiting six minutes for 911 to answer his call. (Susan Goodspeed/CBC)

By the time an operator answered and police arrived, the driver had crashed into another snowbank and passed out behind the wheel, with his vehicle still in drive, Gill said.

He says an officer told him the man was drunk. Peel Regional Police wouldn’t confirm that with Go Public.

Similarly, Helena Shepherd-Snider couldn’t reach 911 when her husband had a heart attack in 2016. Instead, she got a recorded message saying the number was not in service, and to dial zero for the operator.

Helena Shepherd-Snider called 911 while her husband Stan Snider was having a heart attack, but got a ‘not in service’ message. (Yvon Theriault/CBC)

Initially, she says the operator refused to call for her, telling Shepherd-Snider she should do it herself.

“It felt like a double whammy. [I was thinking] where else can I go? What can I do? Time was of the essence,” she said.

After about 15 minutes, she convinced the operator to call 911. She credits fast-working paramedics for saving her husband’s life.

When the dust settled, Shepherd-Snider discovered everyone on her block — about half a kilometre outside Sudbury, Ont. — had 911 service except the last four houses including hers.

A worker takes a 911 call at the RCMP F Division Operational Communication Command Centre on in Regina, in September 2010. Canadians make an estimated nine million calls to 911 every year. (Troy Fleece/The Canadian Press)

Depending on where you live, 911 is run by municipalities, the police or the province, while telecom companies are responsible for supplying the network needed to connect the calls — an example of how the system is fragmented, according to Barkwell.

When Shepherd-Snider called Bell and the municipality, she says they “passed the buck” — neither correcting the issue. Instead, Bell cut off 911 service to her neighbours. ]

The company tells Go Public that their block is outside Sudbury’s service boundaries and that Shepherd-Snider’s neighbours “had been erroneously provided with 911.”

The city says those houses are a provincial responsibility and have separate emergency numbers for ambulance, fire and police.

Shepherd-Snider had no idea.

The shortcomings of the 911 system were flagged back in a 2013 CRTC report and, says Barkwell, haven’t changed. The report found:

A wide gap between Canadians’ expectations and the reality of the 911 system.
No mandatory standards for 911 services.
Inconsistent funding.
No federal oversight.
Some outlying communities have no access to 911.
Some call centres in urban areas are overwhelmed and don’t have the funding to fix the issue.

One of the biggest problems, according to Barkwell, is that 911 services still use old analog technology, which makes it difficult to locate people using mobile phones.

She says mobile apps have a better chance of locating someone than 911.

“The biggest question I get from people often is how come Uber can find me and how come Domino’s Pizza can find me but 911 can’t find me?” Barkwell said.

Holly Barkwell, of the National Emergency Number Association, says the problems with 911 will be complicated and pricey to fix. (Skype)

A number of recent deaths have highlighted other problems with 911 services, and how they co-ordinate with emergency personnel.

B.C. is promising changes to its 911 system after a woman bled to death after waiting 35 minutes for an ambulance in Vancouver in 2018. An ambulance was dispatched promptly, but attendants were unable to reach her because the doors and an elevator in her building were locked, and firefighters were called in too late.

In Ontario, the deaths of four people in two separate incidents led to dozens of recommendations from the provincial coroner, and to a bill meant to address problems with 911.

Ontario MPP France Gélinas doubts the province will pass her bill, which is aimed at improving 911 service. (Mathieu Gregoire/CBC)

“People have lost their lives and people will continue to lose their lives,” said France Gélinas, the NDP MPP, who last year put forward Bill 75, which is currently before the social policy committee.

Gélinas says she doesn’t believe the Tory government will pass the bill, however, and, when asked by Go Public, the provincial Ministry of Health wouldn’t say. Spokesperson David Jensen said the government has established a task force to look at the problems with the system, including the coroner’s recommendations.

Ontario does not have legislation to govern delivery of 911 service or to provide secure funding for it. Certain provinces, including Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Quebec do.

In March, the CRTC introduced a plan to modernize 911 networks in Canada. As part of that plan, telecoms must upgrade from analog technology to digital by June 30, 2023.

It’s a good start, says Barkwell, but doesn’t address the many other problems like inconsistent or inadequate funding.

In the meantime, after his experience with the dangerous driver in Mississauga, Sam Gill says he worries what might happen to his family or others if there is another emergency.

“We’ve lost our faith and that’s not a good feeling,” he said.

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Justin Trudeau’s Announcing Cuts to Immigration Could Facilitate a Trump Win

Published

15 mins ago

November 5, 2024

Nick Kossovan

Outside of sports and a “Cold front coming down from Canada,” American news media only report on Canadian events that they believe are, or will be, influential to the US. Therefore, when Justin Trudeau’s announcement, having finally read the room, that Canada will be reducing the number of permanent residents admitted by more than 20 percent and temporary residents like skilled workers and college students will be cut by more than half made news south of the border, I knew the American media felt Trudeau’s about-face on immigration was newsworthy because many Americans would relate to Trudeau realizing Canada was accepting more immigrants than it could manage and are hoping their next POTUS will follow Trudeau’s playbook.

Canada, with lots of space and lacking convenient geographical ways for illegal immigrants to enter the country, though still many do, has a global reputation for being incredibly accepting of immigrants. On the surface, Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver appear to be multicultural havens. However, as the saying goes, “Too much of a good thing is never good,” resulting in a sharp rise in anti-immigrant sentiment, which you can almost taste in the air. A growing number of Canadians, regardless of their political affiliation, are blaming recent immigrants for causing the housing affordability crises, inflation, rise in crime and unemployment/stagnant wages.

Throughout history, populations have engulfed themselves in a tribal frenzy, a psychological state where people identify strongly with their own group, often leading to a ‘us versus them’ mentality. This has led to quick shifts from complacency to panic and finger-pointing at groups outside their tribe, a phenomenon that is not unique to any particular culture or time period.

My take on why the American news media found Trudeau’s blatantly obvious attempt to save his political career, balancing appeasement between the pitchfork crowd, who want a halt to immigration until Canada gets its house in order, and immigrant voters, who traditionally vote Liberal, newsworthy; the American news media, as do I, believe immigration fatigue is why Kamala Harris is going to lose on November 5^th.

Because they frequently get the outcome wrong, I don’t take polls seriously. According to polls in 2014, Tim Hudak’s Progressive Conservatives and Kathleen Wynne’s Liberals were in a dead heat in Ontario, yet Wynne won with more than twice as many seats. In the 2018 Quebec election, most polls had the Coalition Avenir Québec with a 1-to-5-point lead over the governing Liberals. The result: The Coalition Avenir Québec enjoyed a landslide victory, winning 74 of 125 seats. Then there’s how the 2016 US election polls showing Donald Trump didn’t have a chance of winning against Hillary Clinton were ridiculously way off, highlighting the importance of the election day poll and, applicable in this election as it was in 2016, not to discount ‘shy Trump supporters;’ voters who support Trump but are hesitant to express their views publicly due to social or political pressure.

My distrust in polls aside, polls indicate Harris is leading by a few points. One would think that Trump’s many over-the-top shenanigans, which would be entertaining were he not the POTUS or again seeking the Oval Office, would have him far down in the polls. Trump is toe-to-toe with Harris in the polls because his approach to the economy—middle-class Americans are nostalgic for the relatively strong economic performance during Trump’s first three years in office—and immigration, which Americans are hyper-focused on right now, appeals to many Americans. In his quest to win votes, Trump is doing what anyone seeking political office needs to do: telling the people what they want to hear, strategically using populism—populism that serves your best interests is good populism—to evoke emotional responses. Harris isn’t doing herself any favours, nor moving voters, by going the “But, but… the orange man is bad!” route, while Trump cultivates support from “weird” marginal voting groups.

To Harris’s credit, things could have fallen apart when Biden abruptly stepped aside. Instead, Harris quickly clinched the nomination and had a strong first few weeks, erasing the deficit Biden had given her. The Democratic convention was a success, as was her acceptance speech. Her performance at the September 10th debate with Donald Trump was first-rate.

Harris’ Achilles heel is she’s now making promises she could have made and implemented while VP, making immigration and the economy Harris’ liabilities, especially since she’s been sitting next to Biden, watching the US turn into the circus it has become. These liabilities, basically her only liabilities, negate her stance on abortion, democracy, healthcare, a long-winning issue for Democrats, and Trump’s character. All Harris has offered voters is “feel-good vibes” over substance. In contrast, Trump offers the tangible political tornado (read: steamroll the problems Americans are facing) many Americans seek. With Trump, there’s no doubt that change, admittedly in a messy fashion, will happen. If enough Americans believe the changes he’ll implement will benefit them and their country…

The case against Harris on immigration, at a time when there’s a huge global backlash to immigration, even as the American news media are pointing out, in famously immigrant-friendly Canada, is relatively straightforward: During the first three years of the Biden-Harris administration, illegal Southern border crossings increased significantly.

The words illegal immigration, to put it mildly, irks most Americans. On the legal immigration front, according to Forbes, most billion-dollar startups were founded by immigrants. Google, Microsoft, and Oracle, to name three, have immigrants as CEOs. Immigrants, with tech skills and an entrepreneurial thirst, have kept America leading the world. I like to think that Americans and Canadians understand the best immigration policy is to strategically let enough of these immigrants in who’ll increase GDP and tax base and not rely on social programs. In other words, Americans and Canadians, and arguably citizens of European countries, expect their governments to be more strategic about immigration.

The days of the words on a bronze plaque mounted inside the Statue of Liberty pedestal’s lower level, “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free…” are no longer tolerated. Americans only want immigrants who’ll benefit America.

Does Trump demagogue the immigration issue with xenophobic and racist tropes, many of which are outright lies, such as claiming Haitian immigrants in Ohio are abducting and eating pets? Absolutely. However, such unhinged talk signals to Americans who are worried about the steady influx of illegal immigrants into their country that Trump can handle immigration so that it’s beneficial to the country as opposed to being an issue of economic stress.

In many ways, if polls are to be believed, Harris is paying the price for Biden and her lax policies early in their term. Yes, stimulus spending quickly rebuilt the job market, but at the cost of higher inflation. Loosen border policies at a time when anti-immigrant sentiment was increasing was a gross miscalculation, much like Trudeau’s immigration quota increase, and Biden indulging himself in running for re-election should never have happened.

If Trump wins, Democrats will proclaim that everyone is sexist, racist and misogynous, not to mention a likely White Supremacist, and for good measure, they’ll beat the “voter suppression” button. If Harris wins, Trump supporters will repeat voter fraud—since July, Elon Musk has tweeted on Twitter at least 22 times about voters being “imported” from abroad—being widespread.

Regardless of who wins tomorrow, Americans need to cool down; and give the divisive rhetoric a long overdue break. The right to an opinion belongs to everyone. Someone whose opinion differs from yours is not by default sexist, racist, a fascist or anything else; they simply disagree with you. Americans adopting the respectful mindset to agree to disagree would be the best thing they could do for the United States of America.

______________________________________________________________

Nick Kossovan, a self-described connoisseur of human psychology, writes about what’s

on his mind from Toronto. You can follow Nick on Twitter and Instagram @NKossovan.

News

Former athletes lean on each other to lead Canada’s luge, bobsled teams

Published

24 mins ago

November 5, 2024

Anne Joseph

CALGARY – Sam Edney and Jesse Lumsden sat on a bench on Parliament Hill during an athlete celebration after the 2014 Winter Olympic Games.

Having just represented Canada in their sliding sports — Lumsden in bobsled and Edney in luge — the two men pondered their futures together.

“There was actually one moment about, are we going to keep going? Talking about, what are each of us going to do? What’s the next four years look like?” Edney recalled a decade later.

“I do remember talking about that now. That was a big moment,” Lumsden said.

As the two men were sounding boards for each other as athletes, they are again as high-performance directors of their respective sliding sports.

Edney, an Olympic relay silver medallist in 2018 and the first Canadian man to win a World Cup gold medal, became Luge Canada’s HPD upon his retirement the following year.

Lumsden, a world and World Cup bobsled champion who raced his third Olympic Games in 2018, leaned on his sliding compatriot when he returned from five years of working in the financial sector to become HPD at Bobsleigh Canada Skeleton in July.

“The first person I called when BCS reached out to me about the role that I’m in now is Sam,” Lumsden said recently at Calgary’s WinSport, where they spent much of their competitive careers and now have offices.

“It’s been four months. I was squatting in the luge offices for the first two months beside him.

“We had all these ideas about we’re going to have weekly coffees and workouts Tuesday and Thursday and in the four months now, we’ve had two coffees and zero workouts.”

Canada has won at least one sliding-sport Olympic medal in each of the last five Winter Games, but Edney and Lumsden face a challenge as team leaders that they didn’t as athletes.

WinSport’s sliding track, built for the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary and where Edney and Lumsden did hundreds of runs as athletes, has been closed since 2019 needing a $25-million renovation.

There is no sign that will happen. WinSport took the $10 million the provincial government offered for the sliding track and put the money toward a renovation of the Frank King Lodge used by recreational skiers and snowboarders.

Canada’s only other sliding track in the resort town of Whistler, B.C., has a fraction of Calgary’s population from which to recruit and develop athletes.

“The comparison is if you took half the ice rinks away in the country, hockey and figure skating would be disarray,” Edney said.

“It just changes the dynamic of the sports completely, in terms of we’re now scrambling to find ways to bring people to a location that’s not as easy to get to, or to live out of, or to train out of full time.

“We’re realizing how good we had it when Calgary’s (track) was here. It’s not going to be the end of us, but it’s definitely made it more difficult.”

Lumsden, a former CFL running back as well as an Olympian, returned to a national sport organization still recovering from internal upheaval that included the athlete-led ouster of the former president and CEO after the 2022 Winter Olympics, and Olympic champion pilot Kaillie Humphries suing the organization for her release to compete for the U.S. in 2019.

“NSOs like Luge Canada and Bobsleigh Canada Skeleton, they’re startups,” Lumsden said. “You have to think like a startup, operate like a startup, job stack, do more with less, especially in the current environment.

“I felt it was the right time for me to take my sporting experience and the skill set that I learned at Neo Financial and working with some of the most talented people in Canada and try to inject that into an NSO that is in a state of distress right now, and try to work with the great staff we have and the athletes we have to start to turn this thing around.”

Edney, 40, and Lumsden, 42, take comfort in each other holding the same roles in their sports.

“It goes both ways. I couldn’t have been more excited about who they hired,” Edney said. “When Jesse was coming in, I knew that we were going to be able to collaborate and work together and get things happening for our sports.”

Added Lumsden: “We’ve been friends for a long time, so I knew how he was going to do in his role and before taking the role, having the conversation with him, I felt a lot of comfort.

“I asked ‘are you going to be around for a long time?’ He said ‘yeah, I’m not going anywhere.’ I said ‘OK, good.'”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 4, 2024.

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Canada’s Dabrowski and New Zealand’s Routliffe pick up second win at WTA Finals

Published

25 mins ago

November 5, 2024

Anne Joseph

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia – Canada’s Gabriela Dabrowski and New Zealand’s Erin Routliffe remain undefeated in women’s doubles at the WTA Finals.

The 2023 U.S. Open champions, seeded second at the event, secured a 1-6, 7-6 (1), (11-9) super-tiebreak win over fourth-seeded Italians Sara Errani and Jasmine Paolini in round-robin play on Tuesday.

The season-ending tournament features the WTA Tour’s top eight women’s doubles teams.

Dabrowski and Routliffe lost the first set in 22 minutes but levelled the match by breaking Errani’s serve three times in the second, including at 6-5. They clinched victory with Routliffe saving a match point on her serve and Dabrowski ending Errani’s final serve-and-volley attempt.

Dabrowski and Routliffe will next face fifth-seeded Americans Caroline Dolehide and Desirae Krawczyk on Thursday, where a win would secure a spot in the semifinals.

The final is scheduled for Saturday.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published on Nov. 5, 2024.

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