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Bill 10 - Security Services and Investigators Act

October 29, 2008 - Committee of the Whole

Ms Blakeman: Yes. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I very much want to speak in committee on this bill. I tried hard to attend the policy field committee meetings, but because of the rules that were in place at the time, which I hope are going to be changed, I couldn’t find out when the meetings were being held and wasn’t able to attend the one meeting in which most of the discussion took place.

So this is my opportunity now that we’re in Committee of the Whole to raise the issues that I had concerns about. Let me just talk generally first. When I first heard the sponsoring member introduce the bill and speak to it, my memory is that he used a lot of language about, you know: “We want to acknowledge that there’s been a change in the private security sector. They’re much more professional, and we want to honour that and build on a relationship and be more respectful.” Yet I don’t actually see any of that manifested in this bill. What I see is a lot of attempt to distance private security from the police forces, to say: “You can’t look like police forces. You can’t call yourself by anything that might be taken to be a police force.” There’s an extraordinary amount of effort to say: “You’re not that. We don’t see you as a colleague and a co-worker.”

What’s actually happening in the bill is not reflecting what’s currently happening. What’s currently happening is that times have changed, and they’re moving along pretty quickly. I think there has been a long exchange in the Assembly this fall about funding of more police officers and funding of police officers versus funding of sheriffs and who is responsible for doing what. I think that is a manifestation of how things are changing.

Clearly, people feel the need to hire private security. Perhaps they feel they cannot get a fast enough response from the public police force, whether that’s a metropolitan police force or the RCMP, and they choose to spend their dollars to hire private security. Fair enough. Increasingly, we also have municipalities hiring private security, and I’m not talking about sheriffs here. I’m talking about, you know, private security companies that have a profit-making mandate to them and may well have shareholders or certainly one or two co-owners of a company that want to make a profit from this.

On these very grounds we have had private security companies patrolling, presumably for the safety of the MLAs and the safety of the property here. So in places we never would have imagined having private security working, they are now very much working. Things that we previously would have only entrusted to our fully fledged police forces are now being done by private security forces. That’s a fact. That’s the relationship I actually see happening.

I certainly have reservations about how we move forward with this. I’m on record repeatedly with my deep concern about access to personal information and how that is handled because I believe there is not the same understanding coming out of a for-profit. A market-driven sector does not have the same attitude towards protection of personal information. It makes sense. You see some information. You go: “Wow. I’ve got that information, and I could use it to market another service that I’ve got. Wouldn’t that be helpful to people if they knew that I could also offer them this service as well as this service?” It’s often seen as a marketing opportunity, but in fact they have people’s personal information: where they live, you know, perhaps how old they are, how many children or how many people are in the household. Is there a security or an alarm system in the house? There’s a lot of information there that can all add up.

I continue to have serious concerns about how that personal information is protected. Frankly, it’s not about the computer systems. I suppose it is on one level, but computer systems are available now that are sophisticated enough that there are varying levels of access codes. It can be all set up so that people that should have access can get it, and those that can’t have access can’t get it. Where we know the break always happens is human deliberation. Somebody decides they are going to do something even if they’ve been told they’re not to do it or that it’s wrong to do that. It is going in and accessing those databases and using that information for a purpose other than what the information was gathered for. I continue to have huge concerns in that area.

But let me talk about some of the things that were brought up with me. I will start with the stuff around dogs, training and handling of guard dogs, because I think there is an issue here. Right away when you look at the legislation – and it comes up in section 4, I think, right off the bat. There is a heading that says Guard Dog Handlers. Well, a guard dog handler is not necessarily a person who trains a dog. They are two different functions. They can be done by the same person. Certainly, I trained my dog and I also handle the dog, but that’s not necessarily the same person.

Then this goes on to say in 4(1), which is following that section heading:

No person may, without a licence to do so, for remuneration,
(a) engage in the activity of training, handling or controlling a dog for the purpose of providing security to a person, property or premises, or
(b) supply a dog to provide security to a person, property or premises.

I would like to know from the sponsor of the bill why a person who’s training a dog needs to be licensed to do that. There are no references here to the level of standard the dog is to be trained to, to any kind of a universal testing system. There’s just no criteria here at all.

Some of the people that I met with said that this is just a money grab. Everywhere you look in this act it’s about: “You should have a licence. You have to pay a fee for a licence.” I say, “Yeah. Why does someone who trains dogs have to have a licence to do this?” What is the government trying to control? What behaviour are they trying to control, prohibit, or encourage by having someone pass through that gate of getting a licence? That’s not clear in this legislation.

Again, in the earlier section, in Security Services, in 3 it says:

(1) No person may, without a licence...for remuneration,
(a) patrol, guard or provide security for another person or for the property or premises of another person, or
(b) detect loss of or damage to the property or premises…
(2) No person may advertise, hold out or offer to provide a service…

et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, unless you’ve got a licence. Well, what exactly is being licensed here? What is that behaviour that you’re trying to encourage, prohibit, or control?

I would argue, particularly around the dog handling, that that is not clear, and I would like to see an amendment that removed the trainers. You may be able to make an argument to me that someone who is handling a guard dog needs to have certain requirements, but that’s required of the handler, not of the dog. The dog will do nothing unless the handler gives them the instructions to do so.

Mr. MacDonald: Who are we training, the dog or the handler?

Ms Blakeman: Exactly.

Making requirements that somebody who is going to train these dogs has to pay a fee: why? That doesn’t make sense to me. So I think, again, you’re working against the purpose of what you said you wanted to do. If you’re trying to bring this whole sector up, and you’re trying to form stronger bonds here, this is not doing it.

That does look like a money grab to me. I don’t see what you’re gaining from insisting that people that are training these animals pay a licence fee. It doesn’t say: train the dog so it can answer this command, or train the dog so it won’t do that. It just says: pay a fee.

So I think the training should be taken out of the act – let me be clear about that – because if they are going to do it, they need to have a very clear set of regulations, standards, tests, and evaluations, and you need to put the money behind that. If you’re going to make people pay a fee and give them those standards, then you’d better be willing to send somebody out that’s going to test that that’s what’s happening. This government doesn’t have a great track record on monitoring and on enforcement, so it’s highly unlikely that they’d be following through on this one. So I would say, you know: don’t say that stuff in the first place.

Now, we can have an additional argument about licensing dog handlers. What is it you’re expecting from those dog handlers? Somebody that has a dog on a leash that is walking around a yard that has equipment in it: what is it that you are expecting them or not expecting them to do? What is the behaviour that you’re trying to encourage or control here, and what does it have to do with the fact the person has a dog with them? I think you need to be very clear about what you’re expecting there.

For starters, how many people are working with dogs that are trained for security in the province? How many dogs are we actually talking about? Is this thousands of dogs? Hundreds of dogs? Dozens of dogs?

Ms Pastoor: And are they trained to kill?

Ms Blakeman: Are they trained to kill? Well, I don’t know the answer to that, and perhaps the sponsor of the bill can get me the numbers on that.

But, you know, are we talking about dozens of dogs, and you’re now going to put a law in place that somebody’s got to pay a licence in order to be able to train them? I’ve got real problems with this and ditto for the handling.

One of the other issues that was raised with me – it wasn’t clear to me in reading what happened in the policy field committee, but perhaps it’s been addressed. Currently the employer is expected to pay the licence on behalf of the security guard. But we’ve got very high mobility right now, and the government would like to encourage more labour mobility. So what’s in it for an employer to pay the fee on behalf of a security guard who can quit the next day and walk over to company B with that licence? Why would anybody want to get involved with that? You just end up with people running small businesses feeling like they’re being ripped off by the government because they’re having to pay a fee.

Let’s talk about the Eurig decision. I mean, the Eurig decision essentially said that the government can only charge a fee large enough to cover its administrative costs, and if it is larger than that, then it is a tax and it should be brought before the Assembly on an annual basis to be voted upon as part of a budget because it’s a tax revenue.

When we have these fees being charged, these licence fees to everybody, to be a security guard, to be a dog handler, to be a dog trainer, to be a locksmith – you’ve got fees and licences all the way through this act. What are you charging them for? Are you charging as an administrative fee? Then what are they getting for their money? Are they getting a newsletter? Are they getting training? They’re getting a piece of paper. That’s what they’re getting for it. And what does the piece of paper say? Not very much at this point.

I don’t want to run out of time, so I’m going to kind of skip to the end, and then I’ll start to work backwards.

I think what I would prefer to see here – because long run is: what do we all really want to know about people that are out there wearing something that looks like a uniform, something that says that I am here, I am in control, and I am part of the security in this place? We want to know that they have been trained. We want to know that they have some sort of training in dealing with the public in a courteous and open manner. Everybody’s fear is that you’re just going to give a bunch of thugs a uniform and a baton to walk around and take out their personal prejudices on members of the public.

Those are the nasty, awful, derogatory terms that you hear people talking in, and I don’t think that’s what you were trying to do in this bill. I heard you say that we wanted to elevate these professions and recognize them as the professionals that they are.

What’s important to members of the public? They want to know that somebody has had training. We’ve got an issue here with licensing people and not knowing what they’re getting for their licence, and we’ve got an issue with no educational component that’s required here. What I would suggest to you is that you require that every security guard who is going to get a licence pay the fee themselves, for starters, because it’s an investment in their career, that in order to receive that licence, they attend at least an eight hour course put on at any of our many local and very fine colleges or educational institutions, and as part of that they take courses and gather information on safety of the public but also safety of themselves.

Officer safety is equally important here. There’s no point in getting those security people hurt. They should get some information about the law. They should get some information about how to testify in court. They should get information on how to collect evidence or at least how not to muck it up. They should get information on how to write reports. So there’s some really simple, basic information there that they could get in an eight- to 10-hour course. They pay 150 bucks, they get the course, and at the end of it, when they’ve passed it, they get their licence. Now we have security guards out there that we all know have had some training. The college system benefits, the individual benefits, and the businesspeople benefit because they’re not having to fork out money for what they don’t know to pay for an employee who can walk across the street and work for the next guy the next day. This way we put the individual in control, and we make sure they get some training that goes along with it. That’s what I would like to see in this act.

I’m very conscious of not running out of time, and hopefully I’ll get another chance to get up, but that’s where I’m coming to in the comments that I’m making about this act. We’re requiring, as I said, a number of licences. There’s a business licence here. There’s a security licence. There’s the licence that you have to pay police to have a security alarm system now. We’re talking about licensing dog trainers and dog handlers. There are a lot of licences and a lot of fees, and I don’t see us getting what we wanted to get out of this.

This bill also covers, I think it looks like, around 10,000 people or maybe a bit more in the province. I heard the member talking about 6,800 security guards and 2,900 locksmiths. That does start to add up, so this is becoming a viable career option. It’s something that people should be proud to do, and it’s something where the public should be comfortable and confident having those individuals around them. I’ll admit that I’ve got a bias. You know, I’m very cautious around police. I’m very cautious around anybody that is in a position to use their personal discretion to limit my personal freedoms. I’m very cautious about that, and I have good reason for that. I think what we want to do is to be able to enhance all of these professions, and I don’t see you doing that in this act.

Again, security alarm responders: “No person may, without a licence to do so, for remuneration, respond in person to the location of a security alarm.” Now, you’ve already clarified through the policy field committee that that’s not supposed to be for retail workers who are going back to their shop where the alarm is going off. I’m wondering what you are trying to achieve by licensing this.

Basically, that person’s job is to show up. Throughout most of the alarm companies, and certainly when I’ve dealt with them, you have to show up. Then once you’re there, basically they phone the police because if there’s clearly been a break-in, then that’s what that security responder is going to do. They’re going to phone the police and say, “There’s been a break-in, and I’ll stand here until you get here.” So are we licensing people to do that? To stand there? Is it because we think that they might go in and rob the property, and that’s why we want to license them? Licensing isn’t going to change that. Education might change that. Screening might change that. Licensing will not change that.

I think I’m going to run out of time here on my first at-bat. Before I get cut off, I’ll just say that I do have other issues that I want to raise. I’m aware that there are other members in the House that want to speak, and I can’t keep going. I’ll let my colleague get up and fill the interim time.

Thank you very much.

[…]

Ms Blakeman: Thanks very much. You know, I’m interested in this argument about us wanting to demarcate private providers of security services so that the public doesn’t get confused, because that was my first response back to the person I was arguing with, and they said: “So what? What difference does it make?” You’re on a plaza. You’re out here on the Leg. grounds by the wading pool. Something goes wrong. You look around. You see somebody with a big hat and a blue outfit. You go where they are. You go running up to them. Do you screech to a stop and go: “Whoops, sorry, you’re not a police officer; you’re a sheriff or a private security person,” and turn around and run in the other direction? No. You say, “Something has gone wrong; please call the police,” and they do. Their call is frankly going to get picked up faster than my call to them.

I still don’t understand. I mean, clearly, I lost the argument. I could not come up with an argument about why it was important that the public not confuse someone in a private security firm with police officers. I mean, our police officers are pretty distinctive, but you put anybody in a black or a navy blue or even an aubergine outfit with a certain cut, and it’s going to look – especially in the dark, and we’re in the dark six months of the year in this part of the country – like an official security-type person. So what’s the problem with confusing them? The person is still going to go there. The security person will help them. If they need the police and it’s a situation where the police are needed, they’re going to be faster at getting it. If you don’t need the police, then that’s the person that you should have been going to in the first place.

The second thing the member said was, “Well, we need decisions about the rights and powers.” Why? This security guard has the right to tell me to move off the property. Am I going to decide that if it’s a security guard, he doesn’t have the right to tell me that, and I’m going to stand and argue with him? What difference would this make given the situations that we’re discussing, which is usually around sort of traffic control, you know, people don’t go in this area, or protection of property or protection of individuals. What you gave me is not a good enough argument. Let’s hear the next layer down for it because I can’t defend that to somebody. I tried it. My argument was too weak, and I lost. So give me a better argument, but if you can’t, then I have to push back and say, “Sorry, that’s not good enough.”

Now, you said that you want to license the people who train the dogs, and you said that you want to measure that proper training that was used. What exactly are you going to measure? Otherwise, you’re charging these people a fee, and who in Alberta has the expertise to measure the training of the, okay, let’s call it 200 guard dogs in Alberta? Who’s got the expertise to do that? You know what? It’s going to come down to be a couple of trainers that are in Alberta right now, and they’re going to be the people who you’re now trying to license to be able to train. But you cannot put that stuff in place and charge people a fee for this until you’ve got very clear requirements about what you mean.

Let me push the member a little harder. What exactly do you want them to be able to do or not do as a trainer? Can you articulate that to me now? I’d argue that if you can’t articulate that now, then we shouldn’t be licensing these people to train. We don’t really know what we want them to train for.

We can articulate what we don’t want. What are we worried about? We’re worried about somebody training a dog that turns into some frothing maniac that gets loose and hurts people. That’s what we’re worried about. As a dog trainer I can tell you that that’s a very badly trained dog if it gets loose and hurts people. Nobody is going to catch that dog. It’s not about, you know, essentially how they got trained. So I’m going to push back a little there because your arguments aren’t standing up for me.

The other thing was about the requirement for training of security personnel. I would argue that you must have a reference to that in the legislation. I can understand why you want to have the specifics in regulation. That’s fine. But if you do not attach the requirement for the training to a licence in the actual legislation, then you really don’t have to do it. Anybody reading the legislation doesn’t see where they have to do it. It doesn’t become part of our requirements about being a security guard.

I would argue that you need to extend your amendments and add in a section that says: in order to get your licence, you will be required to take a training course. Then you can fill in the rest: whether it’s a one-day or two-day, an eight-hour or 16-hour course you can take. All the rest of that can be in the regulations. I can’t believe I said that. I wish it was all in the legislation. But, no, it’s appropriate that the details of that would be in the regulations.

If you don’t put it in the legislation, then there will be no overt requirement for training whatsoever. Regs are always hooked to something in the sponsoring legislation. You’ve got nothing to hook a regulation about training to in the legislation unless you put the training in the legislation. There’s no way to hook it in there. So I think you’ve got a problem.

The other point that I wanted to talk about – and then I do want to hear what the amendments are coming from the member – was around the prohibited titles. I think the international use of titles like protection or security implies professionalism. I thought what we were trying to do here was accord a professional status to this sector, so why wouldn’t they be able to use things like protection officer or security officer? They’re not a police officer. Nobody would think that they were. It doesn’t say police officer. They don’t have the tag on the side that says: police, city of Edmonton, number blah blah. It says Intel Security, you know, or the We’re Stronger Than You Private Security Company.

Actually, I find this a little insulting. I know that the member didn’t mean it that way, but when you start out by saying, “Oh, we want to acknowledge the professionalism of this sector,” and then the first thing you say is, “You can’t call yourself or look anything at all like any public security service,” in other words, police service or RCMP, then what are we doing here? This is all about: you can’t, you can’t, you can’t. Under Prohibited Titles under section 39:

A licensee shall not use the expression “private detective”, “law enforcement officer”, “protection officer” or “security officer” in connection with a business or employment . . . or hold out that they are those. Prohibited terminology:
A business licensee shall not use the term “police.”

Well, that one I agree with. Law enforcement: yeah, I’m probably with you on that. But I don’t see what the problem is with protection officer or security officer. If we’re trying to acknowledge that these are working hand in glove now, that in fact we don’t have to or choose not to fund our police services to the extent that they would need to be in order to provide every single protection and peace and enforcement service that the public requires of them, and if we are going to work with and hire other protection agencies to offer to fill in some of those services, we’ve got to acknowledge that, or you’ve got a very unhappy mingling of individuals here.

The final one was around regulations. Oh, my favourite part. Part 9, Regulations:45(1) The Lieutenant Governor in Council may make regulations, and then there is this never-ending list. Part of what’s on the neverending list are sections (h) and (i):

(h) respecting the types of weapons and equipment that may be used by individual licensees or classes of individual licensees generally or in particular…and prohibiting the use of weapons and equipment. Then it goes on about:
(i)…the training, use and control of dogs used for the security of persons, property or premises, and prohibiting or regulating the use of those dogs with respect to activities described in the regulations.

So we’re still not close to what exactly they’re supposed to train to or not train to, and it really looks to me like a money grab here. The prohibition about weapons. I have not made up my mind about this, but the argument that was made to me from the owner of a security company is: I send my people out there, and I have to be able to protect them, or they have to be able to protect themselves, so why can’t they carry something that would allow them to protect themselves? I don’t think anybody was talking about guns here, but I had to say: is it fair for us to put someone in a dark and scary place and then say that all they can walk around with is a toothpick?

Hmm. Well, okay. I had to admit that there’s a bit of a problem there. I have not made up my mind on this one, so I’m very interested in the arguments on both sides. I agree that I wouldn’t want to take a job where somebody said: take the bus to the furthest end of town and then walk around an empty yard all night long with no protection at all. Fair enough. I think what we want to do is be specific when we create these kinds of laws that we don’t want someone to be using a weapon that would – you know what? I just don’t know enough about this, so I’m interested in hearing what the arguments are.

There was one other point around those weapons. You see, with the police they’re told that they always use one level of force up from the level of force that’s being used against them. I think we’d want to be careful or regulate or limit what was possible with the private security guards. That’s what we’re aiming for here. For someone to be able to protect themselves without elevating the level of force or elevating the level of force only to a certain point and no higher is what we’re really trying to say as members of the public.

I’m going to take my seat, and I look forward to seeing what the amendment is from the member although there are lots of others who want to speak.