Public Safety Committee on May 7th, 2013

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Okay. You talked about 95% of the remuneration going to veterans or employees. Is that just in the form of wages, or are there other benefits that they get?

[Capt(N) Paul Guindon]

That's in the form of wages and benefits, both combined.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Okay. Benefits meaning health care...?

[Capt(N) Paul Guindon]

Absolutely: uniforms, dental programs, medical programs, free training, and that sort of thing.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

I've met a lot of very chronologically experienced commissionaires in my day. Is there an age limit for the Commissionaires corps? Is it strictly based on health and...?

[Colonel, Retired) Douglas Briscoe (Executive Director, National Office, Canadian Corps of Commissionaires]

No, there isn't an age limit per se. I think that's an older perception of what the Commissionaires are. We're a much younger force than we were, but that perception remains.

There are more veterans coming to us. The Canadian Forces members are retiring at an earlier age; I believe the average age now is 39. We're getting those people coming to our door. That's why this opportunity is important: because we think we can match some of the skill sets required for this work to the skill sets of those people leaving the forces.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

You bet, and that's important.

My next question is on the training in some of the new areas that you're looking at getting into, some of which have potentially a fairly significant physical element attached. The opportunity to get younger retirees or people who are leaving the military and police obviously gives you the opportunity to expand into those areas safely and effectively.

With respect to training and training delivery, you mentioned local training with the RCMP. Are you getting it also in local police forces? Is it in-house training that you do? Can you describe your training delivery?

[Capt(N) Paul Guindon]

In fact, we have both classroom and online/e-learning training methods. We train our guard force in accordance with provincial legislation and regulation. As well, we train them also because not all provinces have a training regulation or legislation on legislating private security. In the Maritimes, the Atlantic provinces are not quite there yet. We also train using the CGSB, which is a federally endorsed training standards curriculum. We've combined the two, and that's what we train to across the country.

But we also provide a lot of training in leadership and management, which is not regulated and not mandated across any of the provinces. We have two levels of courses. In order to provide management and leadership training to our field management, we also provide first aid, CPR, and defibrillator training, which is not necessarily mandated in each jurisdiction either.

We do have a robust training program. When we get a contract in parking enforcement with a city, let's say, there will be specific training for that commissionaire to do her job. It's targeted training that we also provide, which we either design ourselves or in cooperation with the city or the police agency.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

We've heard from a lot of experts in various communities. Prince Albert and many others are taking a community approach to crime prevention, policing, and so on.

Because of the level of maturity of a lot of your members—and I don't mean maturity as in chronologically experienced—especially your new members, such as veterans, RCMP, and so on, who are coming to you with qualities of discipline, self-confidence, leadership training, and so on, do you see the commissionaires assuming a larger role in that kind of community approach to policing?

[Capt(N) Paul Guindon]

It's something that we haven't thought about in the past, but I would say yes. By the way, we do employ five generations in our workforce. In itself that may not seem important, but it is, and especially when you get into work that is a bit more demanding in terms of stress and management.

I'll give you a good example. It's not slated as non-core police work, but it's mall work in shopping centres. We have a contract.... Well, all shopping centres are not necessarily easy sites for a private security provider to work in, but you need the right mix of people. I was visiting Sudbury. We do security at one of the malls there. It took us a few months to realize that often a generation will deal better with their peers within the same generation, so we have a mix in our workforce, not only in terms of statistics but also in terms of who we put on the ground.

With that in mind, and obviously with the right training, I think we would certainly be capable of doing that sort of work, but that has not been our focus so far.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

I guess that would lead me to my next question in terms of employee monitoring and development and so on, the whole training thing, and putting people in the right place with the right skills and so on. Are there career paths within the Commissionaires? Or is it really job dependent or location dependent and that sort of thing? How do you handle the advancement of a commissionaire?

[Capt(N) Paul Guindon]

Yes. We have a performance management program. We do a monitor report on each and every member. Of course, it depends, because we have 16 divisions, as we call them, across the country. Some are larger and some are smaller. In a larger environment, it's much easier to provide a career path.

For example, here in Ottawa, we have commissionaires who have been with us 10, 15, or 30 years and who started as a guard and are now a part of management. They started as guards and now are part of the cadre of instructors and trainers that we have. So yes, there is a career path, and we do track performance.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you, Mr. Hawn.

We'll now move to Mr. Rafferty, I believe, for seven minutes.

[John Rafferty, NDP, Thunder Bay—Rainy River, ON]

Thank you very much, Chair.

Thank you very much for being here. I appreciate this opportunity. I think it was last month that you were in my office and I had a half an hour or so with you. As is usually the case, five minutes after you left, I thought to myself, “Oh, I should have asked this question”. Now I get the opportunity.

All the commissionaires are not necessarily veterans, though. What would be the percentages of veterans and others in the present workforce?

[Capt(N) Paul Guindon]

In the present workforce, it's about 45%, or 8,000 out of 17,000 full-time employees.

[John Rafferty, NDP, Thunder Bay—Rainy River, ON]

Yes, and as I look at this list of things and the direction you're going in, it looks the Commissionaires organization is going to be quite aggressive as they move forward into the more traditional policing sorts of areas. I'm looking at things like 911 dispatch and those sorts of things that require particular skills.

Is there a minimum number of veterans on a percentage basis that you want to maintain, though, in your organization? Because I think that's certainly worthy, the work that you do, and the support that you provide veterans, but I wonder, as things become more specialized—you know, not chasing guys who are parked wrong at the airport—and as things change, is there going to be a bit of a struggle to ensure that you have veterans and that you keep the percentage up?

[Capt(N) Paul Guindon]

That is exactly one of the reasons why we want to do more in terms of alternative service delivery for police agencies and the so-called non-core policing. Because in many cases.... The 911 dispatch, which we do, does require certain skill sets, specific skill sets, and often, if not all the time, has a job rate that is a little higher than it is for your standard security, your private security guard. We want to get into this business more in order to attract more veterans.

The veterans today, as Doug pointed out, are younger when they come out of the forces. Seventy per cent of them have no pension, but they're not always interested in a lower-paying job, a job that is not challenging or does not use their skills. By exploring other job opportunities, and also by, in the past, developing new business lines, we've been able to attract the newer veterans. This is sort of a recruiting campaign at the same time.

Yes, we want to have more veterans in there, within our ranks. Eight thousand is not enough. As I said earlier, we're recruiting about a thousand a year. Yes, there are some who are retiring at the same time, but we are much more aggressive in our recruiting approach, our recruiting effort. This is another means to do that.

[John Rafferty, NDP, Thunder Bay—Rainy River, ON]

As you've moved forward, and as you are moving forward, have you found that police services, and I suppose municipal police services in particular, have been quite amenable to opening their doors to the Commissionaires?

[Capt(N) Paul Guindon]

Some are.

[John Rafferty, NDP, Thunder Bay—Rainy River, ON]

Or is a bit of an education, a bit of a struggle?

[Capt(N) Paul Guindon]

Yes, it is a big education. In fact, the onus is on us to do that. Some are more open than others. We might have been seen as a threat to their workforce in the past in some quarters within their organization, but we have made some headway. Police agencies or municipalities have used the opportunity to launch pilot projects, not only to see if this would work, but also to see if it would bring benefits or be more efficient.

I'm thinking about Sault Ste. Marie, for example. Three years ago, they decided to look at an ASD approach to do their parking enforcement. They came to us and hired us. In fact, about a month ago, I was reading their yearly report of this pilot project, which was presented to city council. It is a good success story.

[John Rafferty, NDP, Thunder Bay—Rainy River, ON]

Was there an indication of how much money they saved?

[Capt(N) Paul Guindon]

Yes, it was $500,000 a year.

[John Rafferty, NDP, Thunder Bay—Rainy River, ON]

Using your service.

[Capt(N) Paul Guindon]

Yes. In terms of percentages, it's about 30%.