Power outages and downed tree limbs after the ice storm of 2013, residents without water for days on end following the deep freeze of 2015. These are the kind of crises that drive up calls to 311, the city hotline that typically deals with more mundane complaints, about garbage pickup, broken traffic lights and potholes.

But now 311 is facing a different kind of road bump.

Suicide calls to the phone line are up in the past six months, and customer service representatives are being trained to respond to the cries for help.

Gary Yorke, director of 311, attributes the influx to concerns about confidentiality.

“In the last few months there has been a dramatic increase of those calls,” says Yorke. “When you call 911, you’re forced to make an official record of (the call) and the police are dispatched. So some people don’t necessarily want that articulated.”

Privacy has been a concern since it was revealed that non-criminal mental health records kept by police have been shared with U.S. officials, resulting in a Canadian woman being turned back at the border. Such records have also been routinely disclosed to potential employers and agencies during police background checks and vulnerable sector screenings.

The province recently proposed legislation banning the disclosure by law enforcement agencies of non-criminal mental health records, including suicide threats.

But criticism has also been levelled at police forces after numerous high-profile instances in which emergency encounters with mentally ill suspects have led to fatalities.

Yorke says depending on the seriousness of the call, suicide threats will be handled internally by 311 customer service representatives or referred to suicide hotlines.

“If they refuse to speak to 911, we will not forward that call because we will lose that individual,” says Yorke. “We will try to get any type of support mechanism and keep them on the call and keep them calm.”

The suicide calls are the latest challenge for 311, which was created in 2009 to centralize complaints from residents to six city divisions, including solid waste, transportation, water, animal services, urban forestry and municipal licensing and standards.

The city division has evolved since then in response to catastrophes such as the ice storm of 2013, which brought down tree limbs and caused widespread power outages.

This year’s deep freeze in February saw complaints about burst pipes flood into 311, accounting for nearly a quarter of total calls, which spiked by about 1,000 a day. (The agency received about 3,200 calls a day on average in 2014.)

“We have to adapt because it’s a changing environment at any time, depending on what is going on outside. It depends on the time of the year,” says Collette Lennie, a veteran city employee who transferred to the Metro Hall headquarters of 311 when the service was launched in 2009.

To respond to the suicide calls, Lennie and other customer service representatives at 311 — which operates 24 hours a day, seven days a week — will receive the same training as those who answer phones at 211, the community-based information line funded by the United Way. That service usually deals with referrals to social service agencies, but operators also receive suicide calls.

It’s not known if the recent increase in calls means that suicide is on the rise, because provincewide statistics are two or three years behind.

“I think all the lines are so busy that people are just randomly calling everywhere,” says Karen Letofsky, executive director of Toronto Distress Centres, which operates the crisis hotline 416-408-HELP.

“But also, it’s more of an open dialogue. It doesn’t mean that the (suicide) rates have gone up. It means people are talking about it more. And probably looking for more help, which is a good sign.”

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Letofsky says her agency has seen an increase in callers expressing suicidal thoughts, but that the number of high-risk calls — when counsellors would contact 911 to send paramedics or police — has remained stable.

“More people are talking about (suicidal thoughts) at an earlier stage and looking for resources, which I see as a healthy consequence of the public dialogue,” she adds.

Counsellors with the distress line have more in-depth training in suicide prevention than 211, 311 or even 911 operators, for whom suicide threats account for only a fraction of total calls.

Improving service

Calls to 311 run the gamut from complaints about city services to requests for restaurant recommendations and information on how a parent can evict their child. The agency even gets questions such as “I put my chicken in the oven for 30 minutes. When should I take it out?” The agency has made numerous changes to improve service:

Water crisis: The agency was flooded with 1,000 additional calls per day during the city’s deep freeze in February 2015, when hundreds of homes lost water after pipes froze. Complaints about burst pipes accounted for 23 per cent of total calls, nearly five times the norm, during that period. Gary Yorke, director of 311, and Toronto Water general manager Lou Di Gironimo created a “SWAT team” of expert staff to deal with the crisis over a three-week period. Yorke is making this a model for other crises, and says a similar dedicated line will be available for questions and complaints during the Pan Am Games.

Interpreters: The hotline has a contract with a translation service that provides access to 180 languages. Interpreters can get on the line when residents don’t speak the same language as the 311 operator. Yorke says city councillors recently became aware of the service and can now use it to speak to residents when there’s a language barrier.

On hold: During the Pan Am Games, callers will no longer be subjected to the typical loop of instrumental music. Instead, Toronto artists will be featured during the Games and for the rest of the year.

Closing the loop: Complaints about potholes are investigated within five days, but there is currently no way for 311 to advise residents automatically on the status of their complaint. Yorke is looking at new software that will allow the agency to notify customers and “close the loop.”

Front of the line: Two councillors and the mayor’s office are part of a pilot project that will move their complaints to the front of the 311 line, instead of putting them in a queue along with everyone else. Yorke says the rationale is that residents have already called in to a councillor, which should escalate the complaint. The project will roll out to the remaining councillors by the end of the year.

Protecting privacy

The ability of government institutions to collect and disclose personal information is governed by sections 31 and 32 of Ontario’s Municipal Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act.

Agencies can interpret the legislation differently, and while some have privacy policies that require consent, not all do. Section 32(d) says personal information collected by institutions can be disclosed to an officer, employee or agent who “needs the record in the performance of their duties and if the disclosure is necessary and proper in the discharge of the institution’s functions.”

Toronto police can see previous 911 emergency calls to an address, but 911 operators, who work for the Toronto Police Service, don’t have the same access.

Toronto paramedics, who also respond to the calls, follow yet another set of privacy rules because they are bound by municipal privacy regulations as well as legislation that protects medical records. “Every call is its own call,” says Kim McKinnon, a spokesperson for Toronto Paramedic Services. “It’s a discrete call. We’re bound by confidentiality (not to access 911 records).”

At 311, call takers have to get permission from residents before asking another city division to investigate their complaint.