Failure to regulate security profession in N.W.T. is a public safety risk, say experts

Some public safety experts say the N.W.T. government’s failure to regulate the security profession and mandate training for guards is putting people at risk.

A Yellowknife security firm has lately come under scrutiny after two incidents where its guards were accused of using force on vulnerable community members.

This month, Risk Control Canada fired two guards who allegedly threw a 63-year-old man head first off the stairs leading to a Yellowknife apartment. The man suffered a broken wrist, black eye and cuts to his head, and police said the two guards are facing assault charges.

Kelly Sundberg, a justice studies professor at Mount Royal University, said security should be treated as a trade, with technical schooling and licensing requirements. 

“When we don’t have standards, professionalism, quality education and training for these officers, it just becomes performative,” he said. 

The guards arrested over the alleged assault at Northview's Norseman Apartments work for the same Calgary-based firm involved in an altercation at the Yellowknife library in November. A video circulating on social media appeared to show a guard at the library shoving a man to the ground, raising his baton and grabbing the back of the man's neck, keeping him on all fours.

The city responded to that incident by saying the security firm would conduct an "internal review" of what happened.

Risk Control Canada would not share its use-of-force protocols and training requirements with CBC News. Several of its guards told CBC News they were not allowed to speak to media. The company also directed CBC News in an email to not speak to its guards on duty.

According to Sundberg, a majority of security firms do not have adequate standards for public safety. He said that institutions are at risk of paying out damages for negligence when someone gets hurt.

“When we see security go sideways, it’s people's lives that can be lost,” he said.

The territorial government said it has no regulations or vetting process to license security workers hired by either public or private entities, and there are no plans to develop legislation.

Carolyn Greene, a public safety researcher from Wilfrid Laurier University, said it was “alarming” that unregulated security guards in Yellowknife are carrying batons, as the video from the Yellowknife library appears to show.

Security workers often interact with vulnerable people and de-escalation is critical to keeping guards and the public safe, said Greene.

She spent five years interviewing more than 1,000 people in 19 Canadian cities about their interactions with security personnel.