Narth 911 ethics complaint after callers on hold

An ethics complaint on the sale of telecom stocks by Innovation and New Technology Minister Mike Moroz was made by La Vérendrye MLA Konrad Narth, PC Critic for Transportation & Infrastructure.

The complaint revolves around a 38-hour outage in March that left Telus customers unable to call 911.

Fisher Branch area’s Dean Switzer died March 23 of a heart attack as his family repeatedly called for over an hour, but were unable to get through to the 911 dispatch centre.

Moroz asked Telus for updates on its investigation into the outage on April 9. The PCs said he sold over $5,000 worth of stock in Telus shares on May 13, but Moroz said he sold those shares on May 8 and took until May 13 to disclose that.

Moroz first named Telus as the company responsible for the outage on May 14 in Question Period at the legislature.

Moroz admitted on May 15 to reviewing the Telus interim report. A May 19 conflict of interest declaration showed the Telus stock sale, according to the PC complaint to the ethics commissioner.

“We saw that Minister Moroz was avoiding at all costs answering the questions or pointing blame in any one direction. And then all of a sudden we had a switch. May 14 questions were raised again, what had happened. There was talk about Telus having an outage, nothing was confirmed, and all of a sudden May 14 Minister Moroz acknowledged there was an issue and Telus was to blame,” described Narth.

“We noted just a day earlier he had sold some shares in the company. That raised some red flags.”

Narth said he does not know how much stock Moroz sold because the minister was only required to say he owned more than $5,000 worth. Moroz’s office is reported as stating the stocks were valued at $10,930, and that he lost $1,000 in the sale.

The stock was also supposed to be in a blind trust within 90 days of becoming minister. The sale happened in about double that time.

“Something didn’t pass the smell test,” explained Narth.

“And sure enough the sale of his Telus stocks had happened after he found out information that was damning of Telus, so that’s concerning. I’m not wanting to say that anything illegal has happened, but ethically there is some concern.”

Narth thinks it could be a case of a lack of due diligence.

“I think they figured wash their hands as quickly as possible would be the best option. I don’t think it was. If you own the shares then you would just need to be dealing with the ethics commissioner and why he didn’t sell the stocks or put them in a blind trust in the 90-day period. Now you’re selling stocks based on information that wasn’t made public and only available to you,” said Narth.

Moroz told reporters at the legislature that he acted on publicly available information that was available online.

Much of the Telus report to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) is redacted from the public.

With the spring session over at the legislature, the earliest Narth expects the ethics commissioner to look at the stock sale is in October.

Emergencies on hold

This look into 911 failures first started after wildfires in the Southeast sprung up this spring.

“How I had discovered this information was from the challenges that Manitobans in general but definitely my constituents, both just as residents and also complaints that I’ve heard from the fire departments during the wildfires in the Woodridge area that capacity at the 911 centre along with this Telus outage has been a growing concern,” said Narth.

“The constituent of mine had called on several occasions to report a wildfire (near Zhoda) that was creating potential danger to residents, and he kept being put on hold. He found that was unusual.”

Narth said the provincial government needs to do a better job telling people staff shortages and call issues is the current reality to avoid people in stressful and emergency situations are not confused.

“Obviously people don’t call 911 regularly but they expect when you call 911 that the call’s answered, and directed appropriately… People are calling 911 and regularly being put on hold,” said Narth.

“I’ve had reports from fire departments that people could be on hold for 10 or more minutes. And it’s not very clear when they call in that an operator is going to come back on and address their emergency.

“So I think along with this story we’ve got some critical faults with the 911 answering service and that’s something this government is now going to have to be responsible for. I’m not saying they’ve created the issue but we either have a call volume issue or a lack of capacity issue.”

Fire department chiefs use 911 dispatch to call their firefighters to the firehall when there is an emergency. Narth said he has been told 911 putting people on hold is a “new norm.”

“So it’s created some challenges with fire departments on communicating a report of an emergency,” said Narth.