Six in Ten Canadians (59%) Agree with Expanded Role for Private Security Firms in Supporting Police Services

Montreal, Quebec, November 15, 2017 — Some private security firms in Canada are proposing to offer supplementary tasks like traffic management, prisoner detention and transportation services, and follow-up for non-criminal calls, in support of police services. They argue that this could help lower government spending on police services and allow police officers to focus on other police duties. A new Ipsos survey for GardaWorld has found that a majority of Canadians appear to be in favour of such a proposal. Six in ten (59%) agree (16% completely/43% strongly), while three in ten (29%) disagree and a further one in ten (12%) aren’t sure.

Public comfort with the involvement of private security firms in supporting police services varies depending on the task at hand: while eight in ten (79%) are comfortable (37% very/42% somewhat) with private security firms working security during major events, such as music festivals, this falls to 37% who are comfortable (12% very/24% somewhat) with the idea of securing crime scenes.

Other key findings from the survey include:

• Six in ten Canadians (61%) say they could get on board with private security companies helping the police with specific duties, but only if there were no jobs cut in the police force (a further 19% say they could support the idea even if it meant job cuts in the police force, and 20% don’t know);
• Four in ten (45%) feel that outsourcing these duties to major private security companies does not put public safety at risk, while one in three (32%) feel that is does, and 23% don’t know;

For more details, please consult the full report.

About the Study

These are some of the findings of an Ipsos poll conducted between October 27 and November 1, 2017, on behalf of GardaWorld. For this survey, a sample of 1,007 Canadians aged 18+ was interviewed. Weighting was then employed to balance demographics to ensure that the sample's composition reflects that of the adult population according to Census data and to provide results intended to approximate the sample universe. The precision of Ipsos online polls is measured using a credibility interval. In this case, the poll is accurate to within ±3.5 percentage points, 19 times out of 20, had all Canadian adults been polled. The credibility interval will be wider among subsets of the population. All sample surveys and polls may be subject to other sources of error, including, but not limited to coverage error, and measurement error.

For more information on this news release, please contact:

Sébastien Dallaire
Vice President, Ipsos Public Affairs
+1 514 904-4324
[email protected]