(Saint-Eustache) Emergency calls to 911 from four Nunavik villages will be handled from Saint-Eustache. This one-year pilot project was announced Thursday by the Minister responsible for Relations with First Nations and Inuit, Ian Lafrenière.
Minister Lafrenière was at Saint-Eustache City Hall to make this announcement on behalf of his colleague from Public Security, François Bonnardel. The Mayor of Saint-Eustache, Pierre Charron, and the President of the Kativik Regional Government, Hilda Snowball, were also on hand for the occasion.
Since Monday, 9-1-1 calls from the Umiujaq community have been received by the Saint-Eustache dispatch centre. Three other communities, those of Kuujjuarapik, Puvirnituq and Inukjuak, will eventually be connected to emergency services in the Deux-Montagnes region.
It is thanks to the fiber optic technology now available in the four target communities that this partnership was made possible. We hope to eventually connect all 14 Nunavik villages at the rate at which the technology can be deployed.
To make this initiative possible, Quebec provided a grant of $900,000 from the government action plan for the social and cultural well-being of First Nations and Inuit. In Saint-Eustache, we hired 13 new dispatchers who received special training from Laval University.
These dispatchers have been made aware of the historical, political and socio-cultural context of the Inuit people. They must also be perfectly bilingual in addition to being able to benefit from a translation service accessible 24 hours a day, seven days a week if necessary. Dispatchers will also have on hand a lexicon containing basic words in Inuktitut.
“This dispatch center will help change the way Nunavimmiut, police and fire departments handle emergency calls. This is a key element in the establishment of resilient infrastructure for Nunavik,” said Ms.me Snowball.
She explained the choice of the Saint-Eustache service because of its expertise, which responds well to the needs of northern communities. She added that the operations have been a success since the beginning of the week. Seven calls had already been received by the Laurentides plant as of Thursday morning.
“One step at a time, our communities are safer thanks to this project,” said the president of Kativik.
CNESST recommendation
This whole process stems from a recommendation made by the Commission for Standards, Equity, Health and Safety at Work (CNESST) following an investigation into the death of a police officer on March 2. 2013.
The poor telecommunications infrastructure had been implicated in the death of police officer Steve Déry. The officer from Ottawa was shot dead while carrying out an intervention in a residence for a case of domestic violence.
“Members of our community commemorated the 10e anniversary of his death last week and this tragedy paved the way for the change we are witnessing today,” said Hilda Snowball.
Minister Lafrenière, who himself attended police officer Déry’s funeral in 2013, stressed that it was not a lack of will, but rather a technological delay that was preventing the establishment of a secure dispatch service.
Cultural safety issue
Despite all the awareness and training offered to dispatchers, the fact remains that it is non-Aboriginal people who respond to emergency calls from Aboriginal people. This communication remains loaded with a heavy baggage of traumas related to colonization.
Hilda Snowball says she is aware that this reality can be uncomfortable for many Nunavimmiut, but the Inuktitut translation service should reassure some. She also maintains that in the longer term, Kativik would like to see Inuit trained as dispatchers to answer calls.
Since there is a large Inuit diaspora in the South, she believes that some people might be interested in taking the training in order to make a career out of it.
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