By Senator Jim Quinn
The Canadian Corps of Commissionaires has provided a second career to tens of thousands of Canadian Armed Forces veterans and former RCMP officers as the federal guard service for critical federal infrastructure.
Canada has never struggled to ask things of the men and women who serve our country. We have asked them to leave their families, cross oceans, and put themselves between danger and the rest of us. We have asked them to serve in wars, in peacekeeping missions, in security operations across the globe, and by responding to emergencies here at home; and they have answered, generation after generation, without hesitation.
What Canada has struggled with is what happens when they become veterans.
For more than one hundred years, one institution has quietly filled that gap. The Canadian Corps of Commissionaires, founded in 1925, has provided a second career to tens of thousands of Canadian Armed Forces veterans and former RCMP officers as the federal guard service for critical federal infrastructure. These are the people checking your ID at a federal building, patrolling a military installation at 3 AM, the trained eyes monitoring perimeter cameras. They respond to security incidents and keep sensitive Canadian facilities safe. These are people who already gave Canada their first career. The Commissionaires gave them a second one.
Earlier this year, the federal government announced it intends to terminate the formal part of that arrangement. Federal guard service contracts will be opened to competition. The Right of First Refusal, in place since 1945, will be terminated on March 31, 2027. Eighty years of commitment to Canada’s veterans, quietly unwound without consultation, without a credible replacement that protects veteran employment, and without the government ever explaining to the Commissionaires, or to Canadians, why.
At a moment when defence sovereignty, national security, and economic nationalism have rarely been more central to Canadian political life, the government is proposing to hand federal security contracts to the open, global market.
The Corps of Commissionaires is Canada’s only national not-for-profit security organization. It employs over 22,000 people, including 3,500 veterans and former RCMP officers, making it the country’s largest employer of veterans – larger than the federal government. It returns 85% of its revenue directly to its employees in wages, training and benefits. It generously supports veteran and military family programs including Soldier On, Wounded Warriors, Military Family Resource Centres and The Pepper Pod, as well as supporting skills training through organizations like Coding for Veterans. The organization exists entirely to serve the people who work for it and the country they continue to protect. For these veterans, it is a post-service lifeline, one built on the skills and training that Canadian taxpayers invested in their first careers, now being put to use in their second.
Since the cancellation of the RFR was announced, the Canada Revenue Agency has awarded their security contract to U.S. security company Allied Universal, a company working in tandem with ICE, involved in the Trump administration’s mass deportation system that has terrorized the streets of United States.
The government cannot credibly champion veterans’ employment while simultaneously dismantling the only mechanism that has delivered it in quality and quantity for eight decades. No doubt there are private sector companies who provide security service but it is highly unlikely that they would have a workforce that has served Canada in their first careers during which they have been trained in matters of safety, security and protection of Canadians and others, their institutions and installations at home and abroad. We have a ready-made workforce that has served us. Our tax dollars have trained them, and their ongoing training and other needs have been provided by a not-for-profit organization for over 80 years.
As we approach Remembrance Day, “Lest We Forget” carries a particular weight this year. The federal government is proposing to forget something specific: a promise made in 1945 to the veterans who made that year possible. Veterans deserve better than one day of recognition each year.
Lest we forget. This year, that phrase has a very specific meaning. The veterans who built second careers serving Canada through the Commissionaires are watching to see if we still mean it.
Originally published in the Telegraph-Journal (PostMedia) Oct 21, 2026
