Responding around the clock: Inside our emergency response centre
Global Affairs Canada’s 24/7 Emergency Watch and Response Centre provides emergency consular services to Canadians abroad.
The team works in shifts, responding to Canadians who need help all hours of every day and night.
As you’d expect, during international crises, requests for help increase drastically and quickly.
To continue to respond to all those who need help, employees across the department step in to make sure no Canadian gets left behind.
Here’s how we’ve expanded our capacity to handle the increased demand as we face a crisis in the Middle East.
Teamwork is crucial in handling the increased calls for help
Our response centre
People working across the department in Ottawa have come forward to help the emergency contact centre answer questions coming from Canadians in the region via phone, email, chat, SMS and messaging apps.
“Each conversation with an affected Canadian in Lebanon is a unique story, a personal plea for assistance,” says a responder in the call centre. “Being part of getting them to safety is an honour and privilege to me.”
Employees from across the department stepping in to help Canadians in need
Given their increased workload and long hours, a sense of fatigue would be understandable. However, the spirit in the contact centre is quite the opposite.
There’s an immediate sense of unity, urgency and compassion upon entering their space as they carefully tend to the unique needs of each person they help. Their dedication is contagious as they respond to the thousands of emails, answer the many calls and deal with everything in between.
“On September 29, we had 40 employees working the overnight shift in our call centre because there was a flight available on October 1,” says Sébastien Beaulieu, Director General of Emergency Management.
“The dedication of our staff members that night to making sure that everyone in Lebanon who could fly out the following day had a seat and was prepared with all the information they needed to leave was powerful.”
Another late-night validating data and responding to calls for help
And that’s not all
Behind the scenes, more employees stepped away from their usual roles and dedicated themselves to data entry and validation, ensuring that names and information of those wishing to leave was accurate.
On the ground
Members of the Standing Rapid Deployment Team helping Canadians in Beirut
Increasing surge capacity goes beyond borders.
Global Affairs Canada deployed members of the Standing Rapid Deployment Team to the region to support planning and operations, as well as providing emergency response, coordination, consular assistance and logistical support.
The team is always on standby, ready to deploy at short notice to assist missions in responding to emergencies.
Team members in Cyprus, Greece, Israel, Lebanon, Türkiye and the West Bank have been supporting our offices in the region to help Canadians as they grapple with this increasingly difficult situation.
As the crisis continues to unfold, Global Affairs Canada remains committed to supporting its citizens, proving that in times of turmoil, compassion and determination are invaluable.
Members of the Standing Rapid Deployment Team helping Canadians in Istanbul
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