|
The Story behind the story: Grant Robertson -
The Globe and Mail
The 2008 Michener Award finalists talk about their
award winning stories and the people who helped make them happen -
Michener Awards Ceremony, June 10, 2009
Grant Robertson
The Globe and Mail |
A six-month investigation of Canada’s 911
system for handling telephone emergency calls found that outdated
technology was being used in Canada while industry and regulators
dragged their feet on changes. After the investigation the federal
government ordered a nation-wide update of the country’s emergency
phone system, including technology to locate 911 calls from cell
phones.
Your Excellencies, distinguished guests, colleagues - good evening.
It’s a privilege to be here with my fellow nominees this evening
whose work I have a lot of respect for. And it’s good to see Ed
Struzik in the flesh. I’m from his part of the country and out west,
Ed’s a bit of a god.
It was a year ago now, that the Globe and Mail launched an
investigation into Canada’s aging 911 system.
The story began with a single tragedy that exposed the outdated
technology 911 dispatchers across the country were being forced to
use. Though Canadians have embraced innovation– we carry cell phones
and many of us are using the Internet to make phone calls - the 911
system has been left behind.
This has resulted in several tragedies, but we truly had no idea of
the extent of the problems.
When a baby died in Calgary last summer, it was a circumstance that
seemed too impossible to believe. A frantic family places a call to
911 as their son lies choking, and the ambulance is somehow
dispatched three provinces away in Ontario.
The first question that must be asked is how can this happen? Indeed
the family was using a new kind of Internet phone. But as regulators
and the telecom industry hastily laid the blame at the feet of the
family, and washed their hands of the issue, a more fundamental
question needed to be asked. How could this be allowed to happen?
Who is in charge of 911 in Canada, and why has it failed?
Over the next six months, with the support and resources offered by
the newspaper, the Globe and Mail investigation began uncovering
more tragedies. This was not blip, it was a trend.
Canada’s 911 system was struggling to keep up. But even though
Internet phones had exposed the issue, the true crisis existed in
the inability to find cell phone callers who dial 911 – and yet
about 50 per cent of emergency calls now come from wireless phones.
But cataloguing tragedy was not the point. Showing how to fix the
problem – and that it could be fixed – very easily in fact -- was
the public service that needed to be performed.
The technology to update Canada’s 911 system exists, and all of it
is very affordable for the telecom industry, which for years had
managed to convince regulators that the problem was too expensive
and difficult to fix.
It turns out it wasn’t that hard. Only a month after the story was
published regulators ordered a wholesale upgrade of Canada’s 911
system, which we will start to see the benefits of in the spring.
It could not have been done without the unwavering support of many
Globe editors, starting with John Stackhouse who saw the need for
this story -- even when we weren’t sure what the story was.
Former editor in chief Edward Greenspon, Managing Editor Sylvia
Stead and Features Editor Catherine Bradbury and publisher Phillip
Crawley each provided the editorial and legal support needed when a
news organization takes on a powerful opponent as we did here. And
it is the result of countless hours of work from others including
editor Kelly Grant to help make complex issues accessible.
But the real credit goes to the families of 911 tragedies who
offered their stories, and to the 911 dispatchers who put their jobs
on the line to speak out. We would not be here without them. And
Canadians would not now have a safer 911 system without them.
On behalf of the Globe and Mail, thank you.
Grant Robertson
Michener Awards Ceremony
June 10, 2009
Back to 2008 Award Winner
|
