For more than 30 years, I have worked in policing and private security. I have trained guards, advised governments, sat on committees, and watched the security industry evolve—or, more accurately, fail to evolve—while the risks it manages have only grown more complex and more dangerous.
I do not write this as a complaint. I write it as a warning.
Private security guards are not a cosmetic presence. They are not “eyes and ears.” They are not a box to be checked on a procurement spreadsheet. They are, in reality, the first line of defense on private property—and increasingly, the de facto front line of public safety in places where police presence is limited, episodic, or intentionally absent.
For every police officer patrolling a public street, there are multiple security guards protecting hospitals, transit hubs, condominiums, workplaces, malls, and critical infrastructure. The public rarely sees them—until something goes wrong.
And something has gone very wrong.
Recently, a deceased individual sat in a parked car outside an Ontario hospital for nearly two days. During that time, multiple security guards rotated through patrols of the building and surrounding grounds. No one noticed. No one intervened. No alarm was raised.
This was not a freak accident. It was a systems failure.
In aviation, a single door plug failure at 12,000 feet grounded fleets and triggered immediate reform. In automotive safety, airbags that cause harm are recalled without hesitation. But in private security—an industry responsible for public-facing safety every hour of every day—we continue to treat catastrophic failures as isolated incidents rather than warnings of structural collapse.
Security is not window dressing.
In most hospitals, police do not provide ongoing patrols. Their involvement typically ends once a patient is transferred into care, unless custody or criminal processing is required. From that point forward, safety, observation, de-escalation, emergency response, and situational awareness fall almost entirely to private security guards.
These guards are employed by subcontractors selected through competitive bidding processes that reward one thing above all else: the lowest possible price.
In Ontario, the legal minimum requirement to become a licensed security guard is approximately 40 hours of training, plus CPR and first aid certification at the time of licensing. There are no mandated training tiers based on assignment. There are no ongoing provincial training standards. There are no requirements for paid sick days, benefits, or meaningful professional development.
After licensing, the marketplace decides everything else—wages, staffing levels, expectations, and risk tolerance.
The result is predictable.
Private security has one of the highest turnover rates of any public-facing profession—approaching 70 percent annually in some regions. Guards are routinely paid near minimum wage. Many have no benefits. Some cannot afford basic dental care or prescription medication. Many work while sick because missing a shift means missing rent.
And yet, they are assigned to hospitals, mental health facilities, and high-risk environments where they are expected to manage crisis, violence, medical emergencies, and vulnerable populations.
At the hospital in question, even the most basic indicators of organizational stability were missing. Guards stood side by side in mismatched uniforms—an outward sign of deeper dysfunction. When an employer cannot afford consistent uniforms, it is rarely investing in training, supervision, or support.
There is an old story about a rock band that required bowls of M&Ms backstage, with the red ones removed. The point was not indulgence—it was quality control. If that small detail was missed, the band knew the rest of the contract likely had been ignored as well.
In this context, every undertrained, underpaid, unsupported security guard is a red M&M.
Not because the individuals are incapable. Not because they don’t care. But because the system has set them up to fail.
This is not a labour issue alone. It is a public safety issue.
The province of Ontario has the power—and the responsibility—to fix this. The solution does not lie in blaming individual guards or quietly removing them from a site. It lies in modernizing the Private Security and Investigative Services Act to reflect reality.
Security work is not monolithic. A guard at a construction gate does not require the same training as a guard in a hospital emergency department. Tiered licensing, mandatory role-specific training, minimum compensation standards, and enforceable staffing ratios are not radical ideas—they are basic risk management.
Governments already regulate police, nurses, paramedics, and firefighters according to the risks they manage. Security guards, despite performing quasi-law-enforcement functions on private property, are regulated as though the world has not changed since the 1990s.
It has.
Artificial intelligence will not replace human judgment in crisis response anytime soon. Security work requires situational awareness, empathy, communication, and common sense. And common sense costs more than minimum wage.
The uncomfortable question is this: when you pull into a hospital parking lot in distress, who do you expect to come to your aid? A trained, supported professional—or someone working their second shift of the day, wearing a borrowed uniform, afraid to take a sick day, and paid less than the responsibility they carry demands?
Security failures are not abstractions. They are warnings. And like any warning ignored long enough, they eventually become tragedies.
We should not wait for the next one.