LILLEY: Carney Liberals defend handing CRA security contract to U.S. firm tied to Trump’s ICE

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The Carney Liberals are defending moving a security contract from a Canadian institution to an American firm tied to Donald Trump’s ICE deportations by saying the contract met all criteria. The House of Commons was in a raucous mood on Tuesday as the Conservatives asked the Liberal government about a story broken by the Toronto Sun.

Why did the Canadian Corps of Commissionaires lose out on a government security contract to an American firm over a measly $80,000?

Despite the Elbows Up rhetoric of the Carney government and the Buy Canadian policy officially adopted last December, the Commissionaires lost out on a contract for the Canada Revenue Agency to Allied Universal. That firm, which makes hundreds of millions of dollars from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, including ICE — Immigration and Customs Enforcement — underbid the Commissionaires by just over $80,000 on a $12-million multi-year contract.

Hypocrisy on the Hill

Several Conservative MPs raised the question in the House of Commons, pointing to the hypocrisy.

“It is the height of hypocrisy that after all the buy-Canadian, support-Canadian and defend-Canadian sovereignty lectures that have gone on with the Liberals that the Prime Minister would allow an American security company with ties to Donald Trump’s ICE, the very agency that has been central to Trump’s mass deportation efforts, to replace a hundred-year-old Canadian institution like the Commissionaires for security services at the CRA over an $80,000 difference in bids,” Conservative MP John Brassard said during question period.

Brassard asked why the Carney Liberals were undermining instead of supporting the Commissionaires.

Liberal MP Wayne Long, secretary of state for the Canada Revenue Agency, defended the move time and again.

“The CRA had an independent decision. The decision was clear. It is a Canadian company employing 8,000 Canadians,” Long said in response.

As the Conservatives pushed with question after question, Long stated that Allied Universal met the criteria of the contract. He also said several times that the company is a Canadian company and disputed the idea that the contract went stateside.

Made in Canada? Hardly

Calling Allied Universal a Canadian company is a bit of a stretch.

The company lists two headquarters, Conshohocken, Pa., and Irvine, Calif. It has a Canadian head office in Mississauga, but the company is American-based and American-controlled.

Employing Canadians doesn’t make you Canadian. The profits, the decisions and the ICE contracts all run through Pennsylvania and California.

So far in 2026, Allied Universal has received contracts worth more than US$290 million through the American Department of Homeland Security. Its subsidiary, G4S Security has received contracts worth US$83 million from ICE.

That’s not the type of company that Liberal voters, or most Canadian taxpayers, would be comfortable doing business with.

Yet Allied Universal was awarded the contract, and despite spending the last 18 months lecturing everyone about buying Canadian, the Carney government is defending this move.

Vets left out in the cold

The Commissionaires is a non-profit Canadian organization founded in 1925 to provide employment to veterans. The Carney Liberals keep saying they stand with veterans and with Canadians, but they keep making moves that show the opposite.

Before awarding the CRA contract to Allied Universal, the Carney government announced it was ending the decades-old practice of giving the Commissionaires the first right of refusal on providing security to federal government buildings. That move came after extensive lobbying from global security giant GardaWorld, which also makes a ton of money providing security for ICE and other parts of Trump’s mass deportation apparatus.

Garda hired well-connected Liberal lobbyists who held meeting after meeting pleading with the Carney government to end the practice. Despite years of successive governments saying no, Garda got the yes it was looking for earlier this year.

First the Liberals took away the Commissionaires’ right of first refusal. Now they’ve handed a contract to an ICE contractor. We are watching a century of standing with veterans, undone by $80,000 and a few well-placed lobbyists.

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