Mark Carney has spent his time in office telling Canadians to buy Canadian, back Canadian workers and stand up to Washington. Then his government’s tax agency handed a $12-million security contract to the Canadian arm of an American security giant with ties to Donald Trump’s deportation machine, pushing out a century-old non-profit that exists to employ veterans.
The margin that decided it? About $80,000.
What happened
According to CBC News, public documents show that in June 2026 the Canada Revenue Agency awarded its security contract to Universal Protection Service of Canada Corporation, a subsidiary of Allied Universal Security Services. CBC notes that Allied Universal has ties to the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) deportation program.
The loser was the Commissionaires, a private, not-for-profit organization founded in 1925 to provide meaningful work for veterans of the Canadian Armed Forces and police services. The Commissionaires had held the CRA contract until this latest tender.
Geoff Hamilton, president and CEO of Commissionaires Great Lakes, told CBC the gap between the two bids was $80,000, less than one per cent of the contract’s value. His verdict: “It is just sort of public sector procurement on autopilot.”
Less than one per cent
Think about that number. On a $12-million, multi-year contract, Ottawa decided a sliver of a per cent was worth more than keeping Canadian veterans on the job at the national tax agency’s buildings.
This is the same government that has made buying Canadian a centrepiece of its message. As Toronto Sun columnist Brian Lilley pointed out, the contract went to Allied Universal despite the “Elbows Up” rhetoric and the Buy Canadian policy the government adopted last December.
When it costs them nothing, the Liberals are all for buying Canadian. When it costs $80,000, apparently not.
“A Canadian company,” says the minister
In question period, Wayne Long, the secretary of state responsible for the CRA, defended the decision again and again. “The process resulted in the selection of a qualified Canadian supplier,” he said, according to CBC. “The member knows politicians are never involved in the independent decisions by the CRA.”
The Toronto Sun reports Long also insisted, “It is a Canadian company employing 8,000 Canadians.” Allied Universal itself told CBC it is a registered Canadian company with 10,100 employees and 19 offices in Canada.
But as Lilley notes, the company lists its headquarters in Conshohocken, Pennsylvania, and Irvine, California. Its Canadian head office in Mississauga doesn’t change who owns it. Hiring Canadians doesn’t make a company Canadian any more than a U.S. automaker becomes Canadian by running a plant in Ontario.
The Sun also reports that so far in 2026, Allied Universal has received more than US$290 million in contracts through the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, and its subsidiary G4S Security has received US$83 million from ICE. That’s the outfit now guarding the agency that holds every Canadian’s tax file.
Hiding behind “independent” decisions
Long’s defence boils down to: don’t blame us, the bureaucrats did it. That isn’t good enough.
Ministers set the policies that public servants follow. If the Buy Canadian policy can’t stop a non-profit that employs veterans from losing to an American-owned multinational over less than one per cent, then the policy is a slogan, not a rule. And if the government believed in it, ministers would fix the rules instead of shrugging at the result.
A spokesperson for Long told CBC the CRA’s evaluation considers more than cost, including past performance, business continuity planning and the ability to recruit staff. Fine. Then the government should explain how a group that already held the contract scored worse on past performance and continuity than the company that replaced it. So far, it hasn’t.
Part of a pattern
This didn’t come out of nowhere. CBC reports the Commissionaires were told months ago that they would no longer have the right of first refusal for most federal contracts. In April, The Canadian Press reported that Veterans Affairs was ending the Commissionaires’ $330-million federal contracting right.
The Investigative Journalism Foundation reported in September that Montreal-based GardaWorld had lobbied Ottawa for a decade to scrap that right of first refusal, and that GardaWorld is now winning federal security contracts worth millions.
So the sequence goes like this. A lobbying campaign runs for years. The Carney government strips the veterans’ organization of its long-standing priority. Then the Commissionaires lose a contract they already held, to an American-owned firm, over $80,000.
Opposition from every side
The anger isn’t coming from one corner. Conservative veterans affairs critic Michael Barrett asked in the House: “We can all agree that employing Canadian veterans and hiring Canadian companies is important. The question to the Liberals is why didn’t they do that in this case?”
Conservative MP John Brassard called it “the height of hypocrisy,” according to the Toronto Sun. Even NDP MP Gord Johns asked how giving the work to “a foreign owned corporation with those ties [to ICE] instead of a Canadian owned institution supporting veterans” squares with the Liberals’ Canadian promises.
The bottom line
Carney asks Canadians to choose Canadian, even when it isn’t the cheapest option. His own government wouldn’t spend $80,000 more to keep veterans guarding the tax office.
Veterans deserve better than a slogan. So do taxpayers who were told “Buy Canadian” meant something. If it’s going to be more than a talking point, the government should review this contract, restore a fair path for the Commissionaires, and stop hiding behind “independent decisions” when its own policies produce results it can’t defend.
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