OTTAWA — The president of the Canadian Police Association says he welcomes a study into the outsourcing of police services to private companies.
That’s because the report will ultimately conclude that privatizing policing duties is a bad idea, said Tom Stamatakis.
“The notion that you can hive off core policing responsibilities to for-profit security companies, it’s not in the interest of the public,” Stamatakis said Friday.
The association represents 52,000 police officers across the country. Stamatakis said these officers are better trained and beholden to accountability mechanisms that don’t apply to private companies.
This week, Public Safety Canada commissioned a study into police work that could be done by private security firms to save money. The average security worker makes $12.88 per hour, compared with $27.12 per hour for the average police officer, according to government figures.
Police are not able to keep up with the demand for security services, according to a government document.
The federal department has not tipped its hand about what specific jobs it could consider outsourcing, but one idea that was briefly touched upon during a House of Commons study into policing costs was having private forces give out traffic tickets.
Stamatakis said this would create a huge public safety issue, as traffic stops can escalate.
“It’s often at the routine traffic stop that you find the impaired driver. It’s often at the routine traffic stop that you find a person who’s transporting large quantities of illicit drugs.”
Governments across the country are looking for ways to save money as policing costs have steadily risen. Police officer salaries are up 40 per cent over the last decade, according to the House of Commons public safety committee. A total of $12.9 billion was spent in Canada on policing in 2011.
Last spring, the right-leaning MacDonald-Laurier Institute think-tank released a study that looked at privatization options. It pointed to examples in the United States and United Kingdom of private firms handling non-emergency calls and evidence collection.
Commissionaires currently do some work for police, such as perimeter security for buildings. The Canada Border Services Agency also outsources some functions.
In 2013, a woman committed suicide while in the custody of private security hired by the border agency. Lucia Vega Jimenez hanged herself in a Vancouver airport holding cell operated by Genesis Security. She was not discovered for 40 minutes.