Mr. Chair, ladies and gentlemen, good morning. I am very pleased to be here today.
As your chairman said, I am retired naval Captain Paul Guindon, the CEO of Commissionaires Ottawa, but I do represent the Canadian Corps of Commissionaires as the chairman of our national business management committee. With me is retired Colonel Doug Briscoe, who is the executive director.
We're still doing our rounds, by the way, Mr. President, so we haven't completed it quite yet.
The Canadian Corps of Commissionaires is a national institution at the service of Canada's veterans. Created in 1925, it is driven by its social mandate to provide meaningful employment for veterans of the military, the reserves, and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Commissionaires is a uniquely Canadian solution for veterans by veterans, who lead and manage the organization. It is a fully self-supporting private organization founded on the core military values of dedication, responsibility, and mission, and fuelled by the talents and experiences of veterans. It is also a not-for-profit organization, returning about 95% of its gross revenue back to its veteran and non-veteran members while sustaining a thriving, national, self-funded private enterprise.
Commissionaires has 45 offices and a presence in 1,200 communities from coast to coast. In fact, it is the largest private sector employer of veterans in Canada. We currently have 8,000 veteran employees, and we are hiring 1,000 additional veterans per year. This is crucial because approximately 70% of all veterans do not have a government pension and are not eligible for Veterans Affairs programs. In the majority of cases, the income veterans receive through Commissionaires is their only revenue. No veteran who is seeking and can perform a job is turned away, providing them with much-needed remuneration. Because we are a not-for-profit organization, the services provided by Commissionaires to the Government of Canada are at cost.
While many of you are aware of the work we do guarding federal buildings, you are likely to be less familiar with how we have been working with police services in communities across Canada. This has now become an important area of business for us, and it is currently employing approximately 1,000 of our members. This is a line of business that has grown incrementally. While our federal guard services contract gives us a footprint across the country, where these guard service jobs are located and where veterans are located do not always match up. In some parts of the country we have lots of veterans but few federal guard service jobs. We want to develop other opportunities for our veterans. Our local offices built up this non-core policing initiative community by community, contract by contract, in an organic fashion. Most of the growth was initially in western Canada, but now all of our offices are involved in non-core policing. There is a strong fit between the skills of veterans and the needs of police services. There is a common emphasis on discipline, responsibility, and public service. Police services appreciate Commissionaires because of our ability to train and retain reliable employees who can fit in with a police structure.
We did a recent survey to identify all the alternative service activities provided to police agencies. We are performing over 60 separate functions. We have attached a list at the back of our statement. It is a very interesting list because it suggests all the functions that do not necessarily have to be provided by a sworn, uniformed police officer. And in employing Commissionaires as alternate service delivery, these police services are achieving three objectives.
The first, and most important, is to ensure their sworn officers are doing priority policing tasks and being relieved, to the extent possible, of routine, repetitive tasks. Police services want their officers to maximize their face time on the streets and in the communities.
The second objective is to contain costs in a challenging economic environment where all government agencies are being asked to do more with less.
And for Commissionaires, it is also about providing a broader range of employment that better matches the skill sets of modern-day veterans of the Canadian Forces, the RCMP, as well as other police services.
While our non-core policing business has grown in an incremental fashion, we have determined, as a national group, to put more resources and effort into this area across the country. We will be focusing on the following, as an example: detention services, arrest and release processing, prisoner monitoring and transportation, summons and subpoena services, crime scene security, bylaw enforcement, electronic ticketing, non-criminal fingerprinting and police clearances, photo radar operation, inventory and front desk management, and 911 dispatch.
We will be putting additional resources in these areas for two principal reasons: budget constraints will create more business opportunities in this area for our organization, and we have recognized the changing reality of modern veterans. No longer are our people exclusively retirees looking to supplement their pensions. The recent war in Afghanistan and the rapid turnover and early retirement of police and military members have resulted in a younger and more dynamic veteran than we have seen in decades. In some cases the level of training our veterans bring to the table is unprecedented.
Our challenge is to remain relevant to our police and military community by offering this highly skilled and typically younger group of veterans meaningful, rewarding, and financially sustainable employment. Not every veteran will want a static guard job, so we want to provide more choices, along with the opportunity for higher pay. This is also an area in which we are employing many retired veterans of police forces, which we believe is complementary with our social mandate.
We note in the committee transcripts so far that most of the discussion on policing economics has been focused on municipal police forces. You may also want to explore federal alternative services at every opportunity. The RCMP is the provincial police force in a number of provinces. We are sure there are a number of areas where the private sector could save the RCMP time and money, which in turn would allow the RCMP to stay focused on their core competencies.
Corrections Canada, for example, should also be looking at how they could use the private sector to reduce costs and increase efficiencies. We can see a number of functions that could be performed by the private sector, such as escort duties, some guarding, some parole services.
In our testimony we would like to highlight a unique program in which we support the RCMP. This is the guards and matron program, in which over 2,780 mostly part-time jobs are provided in many regions of the country. The RCMP does the recruitment and training locally, and we provide the back-office support, HR and pay services. This is an important service but particularly so in remote areas and aboriginal communities. We are proud to support the RCMP in this area.
These alternative services will continue to be a growing part of our business because it is an opportunity to create more employment opportunities for our veterans. We have included a couple of case studies with our statement, and we will certainly be pleased to answer any of your questions, monsieur le président.
