On breaches

Late last year, word came out that the private airport security firm Garda had let thousands of airline passengers board Canadian flights with little or no security screening - and that the Cons renewed a federal contract with Garda shortly thereafter. This week, in a story that received far too little attention, the Globe and Mail reported that not only has Garda's track record failed to improve, but the company's employees who took the violation public have been removed from their jobs:

The private company in charge of checking passengers at Toronto's Pearson International Airport has quietly fired three screening officers who blew the whistle on alleged security breaches, The Globe and Mail has learned.

In February, the officers lodged a complaint with Canada's Industrial Relations Board against Garda World Security Corp., alleging their managers took over security checkpoints at Pearson to rush passengers through screening.

As a result, luggage and passengers boarded planes without being checked, the screening officers said. Garda has repeatedly denied the allegations.

The three officers were suspended last month. They received their dismissal notices last week.

A fourth screening officer, who made the same allegations against Garda, was fired in April.

A Garda spokesman refused to comment, but did not deny that three of the company's officers had been laid off...

The Globe obtained internal Garda documents that showed one air traveller completely circumvented security at Pearson in April by walking through an unstaffed screening gate.

Similar documents showed a screening officer checking passengers for U.S.-bound flights at Pearson worked without proper certification for more than a year.

And, in interviews with The Globe, several screening officers said Garda managers used termination threats to speed up the screening process.

The Montreal-based company manages screening at 28 airports across the country, including Montreal's Pierre Elliott Trudeau and Calgary International. It was awarded those contracts by the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority, a federal agency that reports to Parliament.

What the Globe doesn't make clear is that the Cons decided to renew Garda's contract after the worst of the violations had already occurred. And all indications since then are that Garda has predictably taken the Cons' lack of concern then to mean that it can get away with almost anything - particularly since it was CATSA, the federal agency involved, that faced some consequences for Garda's initial failures.

While part of the problem is obviously the Cons' negligent administration, it's worth noting that much of the issue with Garda is related to the delegation of responsibility to a private firm. It's bad enough that there's a serious gap in the respective interests of Canadians who want their airports to be secure, and the company who presumably wants to use as few resources as possible to deliver as little service as it can get away with.

But the choice to contract out also removes the workers responsible for airport security from the scope of protections for government whistle-blowers. And that in turn makes it far more likely that employees who point out problems will be punished for their efforts than if a public-sector entity was responsible.

Fortunately, Garda's apparent mishaps have only led to inconvenience so far rather than any major safety issues. But given the obvious dangers when corners are cut when it comes to airport security, there's no reason for either the Cons as a government or Canadians in general to accept the kind of problems that have come up - or Garda's attempts to suppress them. And in the wider scheme of things, the Garda experience only shows all the more why such vital services are better kept in public hands.