Canada Border Services Agency says it’s cheaper than using their own armed officers as security guards and that they are doing it across the country.
CBSA spokesman Chris Kealey confirmed that the border agency has been outsourcing once-unionized duties to a cheaper, private outfit to “save taxpayer dollars.”
Such duties are being contracted out even when it comes to guarding “high-risk” immigration detainees during hospital visits and medical appointments, Kealey said. The border agency has also hired private security guards to transport “certain individuals from one location to another within Canada.”
“By using these firms, the CBSA is able to save taxpayer dollars. . . . Strict protocols, directives and procedures are in place to ensure that private security firms abide by the CBSA’s policies,” said Kealey.
However, an incident in Brockville, Ont., in September is calling the CBSA policy into question.
Kits White, also known as Kitts Legan White, is a Jamaican national who has been convicted of sexual assault with a weapon and who in 1998 was ordered deported by the federal government. (During a hearing to fight deportation, White’s own lawyer conceded that his client should not be allowed to walk the streets freely.)
White is still awaiting deportation and has been imprisoned at St. Lawrence Valley Treatment Centre in Brockville, a community about 115 kilometres south of Ottawa.
The facility is not a typical jail — it also treats sex offenders and mentally ill males, and has a long waiting list.
In mid-September, White was transferred for unknown reasons from the treatment centre to the intensive care unit at Brockville General Hospital. CBSA hired a private security company to guard White while he was a patient at the hospital.
Hospital staff grew uncomfortable, however, when they realized that White was not in restraints while under guard by the security company, the Ottawa Citizen has learned.
Hours later, provincial corrections officers were called to the hospital to apply restraints to White, including handcuffs and leg irons.
The federal government says that the private security firm met strict guidelines to win the contract and can handle violent offenders. “The private security guards hired by the CBSA are trained professionals who have experience handling difficult situations,” the spokesman said.
CBSA spokesman Kealey said the duties being contracted out were typically handled by CBSA officers. “Immigration detainees” are under guard by correctional officers at jails, but the minute they have to leave the prison the border agency “assumes responsibility” for hospital visits and medical appointments.
But Dan Sidsworth, head of the Ontario Public Service Employees Union’s corrections division, says that’s not the case.
Sidsworth says Ontario jail guards have always handled immigration detainees during hospital visits.
“It’s an erosion of our duties and it’s only happening in Brockville from what I understand. It’s not happening anywhere else in the province,” Sidsworth said.
“CBSA either couldn’t staff it or didn’t want to staff it.”
The firm awarded the CBSA contract to guard White is called Corporate Shield Risk Management, and is run by a 33-year-old dog trainer named Christopher Bax. Bax founded the company a year and a half ago, but was once branded — or as he says, “classified” — as an alleged fraudster by the Brockville Police Service, which he says he is now suing.
The Brockville police told journalists in 2009 a fundraising scheme that had Bax hire a telemarketing firm to cold call Brockville residents asking them for money to buy dogs for police forces.
The telemarketing campaign lasted three days and raised $14,000. The city’s police service distanced itself from the campaign, however, saying they had nothing to do with it and asked anyone upset about a call to contact one of their detectives.
Because Bax’s organization was named Ontario Police and Security K-9 Association, some believed it was connected to a police force, which it wasn’t. Bax ended up returning all of the donations.
“The (Brockville) police force felt threatened by a private security guard company and I’m now suing them,” Bax said.
Bax says he’s owned four private security companies, but his latest venture has so far been the most successful. He said he thought about becoming a police K-9 officer, but said, “there’s more money in private security guard work.”
His company has contracts to patrol a local mall, where he keeps an office, and to protect solar farms from thieves looking to steal copper.
“The dog unit is the gravy for the high-value customers,” Bax says of his K-9 unit, which he has not deployed for guarding CBSA prisoners.
Bax has been training dogs since his teens and says he can train them “just like the police.”
Though the firm’s owner, Bax often works the jobs alongside his employees. The Corporate Shield Risk Management website appears to show one of his security guards dressed in a U.S. army Special Forces uniform with an automatic assault rifle in hand.
Other images on the company’s website show guards in an Oval Office-like setting complete with an American flag, and a helicopter and Land Rover, neither of which Bax owns.
Asked about the equipment and services offered by his company, Bax said the website images were stock photos, and blamed the site’s designer for their use. “Some of that on the website is not acceptable because it portrays us as something we are not.” (As of this story’s publication, the website had not been revised.)
Bax says he has ambitions to expand the services offered by Corporate Shield Risk Management.
“That’s the next step, to get firearms,” he said.
Original Article
Source: canada.com
Author: --
No comments:
Post a Comment