Thank you.
As to whether the charter should apply to private security guards or whether there's reason to place on private security guards the responsibility, for example, of providing the right to counsel and observing something similar to the dictates of the charter, what I'd say is this. In my view, maybe the best way to approach this--and as I said, it's not clear whether the charter applies to these circumstances--or one of the ways of getting at the potential concerns that exist with the private security industry is to increase or to build on the existing regulation. Now, this would likely involve collaboration with your provincial counterparts.
For example, there is legislation in Ontario that regulates the private security industry. At present, that legislation contains a code of conduct that, for example, requires private security guards not to use excessive force. I think there's no reason we could not impose charter-like requirements on the private security industry—so require them to provide a right to counsel, to not arbitrarily detain individuals. That again would likely happen provincially, but I think there's no reason we can't do that.
When you look at the private security industry, in particular, as I've said, they're very sophisticated and they're well resourced. There's really no reason that, as these security personnel are increasingly acting like police, we can't also require the same in terms of obligations or of duties of these officers. I think there is infrastructure for these companies to do that kind of training.
So I think whether we're talking about this bill or not and these changes to the power of citizen's arrest, this is an industry that's largely unregulated but probably ought to be regulated as they come to do more and more work that, as Professor Rigakos has said, looks a lot like standard policing.
Thank you very much.
