Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew described a 911 outage that impacted almost all of Manitoba Wednesday as unacceptable. The outage, which affected all of Manitoba except for the city of Winnipeg, saw residents unable to dial 911 for several hours after Bell Canada said a third-party cut through a fibre cable. “It’s a major concern; it’s not acceptable, and I raised this directly with the Prime Minister today,” the premier said from Charlottetown, PEI, where he is attending the First Minister’s meeting. The service was restored later in the afternoon. Manitobans were directed to call emergency services directly in case of an emergency. Kinew said he was reassured by Prime Minister Mark Carney’s response. “Among other things, he committed to talking with the CEOs of the telecom companies to address this next week,” he said. “There’s a lot of work that’s going to continue to keep Manitobans safe, because these 911 outages are unacceptable.” Editor’s note: Bell Canada, through its subsidiary Bell Media, is the parent company of CTV News Winnipeg.
