Bob Mackin
The president of a national trade organization for security guard agencies says public safety is at risk due to subcontractors that exploit foreign workers in order to undercut competitors.
In an interview, Max Warmuth of the Association of Professional Security Agencies worried that a race to the bottom could bring comparisons to Canada’s trucking industry, where poorly trained and low-paid foreign drivers caused destruction and death on Canadian roads.
Security guard outside Vancouver Art Gallery in April 2026. (Mackin)
“The contract guarding industry suffers from numerous unscrupulous or bad actor guarding agencies that will seize upon every opportunity to lower their cost structure to compete for public bids,” Warmuth, a senior strategic advisor at GardaWorld, told theBreaker. “Even in circumstances where those actions are not consistent with regulatory, legislation, employment standards or other rules and regulations.”
Warmuth declined to identify the companies due to ongoing investigations.
Few barriers, many ways to exploit
Warmuth said bad actors in the security industry misclassify hires as independent contractors so they are ineligible for healthcare benefits and employment insurance. The result is workers, many from India and unaware of Canadian laws, that are paid in cash or direct deposit below B.C.’s $18.25-an-hour minimum wage. A guard working for one company, may be paid by another.
“We know that there are circumstances where some of these bad actor agencies are paying guards literally $10, $12, $15 an hour, and not giving them any entitlements and applying threats when they bring forward complaints,” Warmuth said. “The obvious question would be, well, why aren’t the regulatory entities cracking down on this?”
There are relatively few barriers of entry. As long as someone has a clean criminal record and pays an application fee, they can start up an agency.
“Then they will bring in and exploit these international work students.“
Low paid workers recruited by WhatsApp
A senior executive with a B.C. company, who asked that his name not be published for business reasons, said that foreign students are limited to working 24 hours per week under their visa.
Some are finding jobs for as low as $11-an-hour in cash via recruiters on Punjabi language WhatsApp groups. For those that provide a social insurance number, some companies use middlemen. In at least one case, payment was treated as a loan to the unsuspecting worker.
“The way that you get introduced to those groups is you typically have to know someone in there,” the executive said.
In some cases, a larger company will own shares in a smaller company or a smaller company will be run by former workers of the larger company in order to hide the status of workers from the client. On a semi-regular basis, he said smaller companies will offer quantities of guards to a bigger agency for $19 to $21 an hour.
Max Warmuth, president of the Association of Professional Security Agencies. (LinkedIn)
“As soon as they say that, I know they’re doing it illegally because it’s just not viable.”
The executive said that, during the FIFA World Cup period in Vancouver, government inspectors did site visits to ensure workers held a valid security licence (one must be carried during each shift) and were receiving pay stubs for their work.
Digital licences, which are supposed to be used only until a hard copy is received, are at risk of fraud.
“One of the other tricks that they can do is, when you put the number in [online], it’ll actually show active, but the name of the person is different. So that means someone could have easily taken a copy of someone’s licence that they know, or a friend, or wherever, get a digital copy, put their name on it and picture, essentially falsify it because it’s just a digital copy.”
A criminal record check and fingerprinting are required at the start, but not for renewals. The executive is concerned about how rigorous those checks are for workers from another country and whether exploited workers who have access to sensitive workplaces and information are ripe for recruitment by gangs.
“It’s definitely a concern, especially because a lot of the workers are, just from the fact that a lot of them are out there doing work for cash, shows that they need more money,” the executive said. “So it wouldn’t be difficult to throw some money at people in those roles to get them to participate with those organizations.”
What the NDP government said
A prepared statement from the Ministry of Public Safety and Solicitor General said the Security Programs Division (SPD) investigates complaints under the Security Services Act. Sanctions may include licence suspension, licence cancellation and fines up to $50,000 for businesses.
“If SPD receives a complaint regarding labour practices that are within SPD’s jurisdiction, SPD will investigate in accordance with the Act and SPD’s established processes. Complainants are informed about the outcomes of these investigations.”
Asked if SPD has disciplined any security companies for exploitative labour practices and compromising public safety, the Ministry said: “Requests for information about investigations or investigative outcomes are subject to the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act.”
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