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
