Much of the police argument was premised on the need to address 22-minute-long response times to the highest priority emergency calls. Chief Myron Demkiw said the service needs to hire hundreds more officers to address response times. "I think the ability to bring response times down is impacted by many, many variables, some of which are well beyond our control," he said. On Thursday, in an interview with CBC Radio's Here & Now, Demkiw said the service will be closely monitoring response times in 2024. That includes cutting officer response times, increasing frontline and neighbourhood officers and providing a long-term hiring plan for the service.
