From migrant detention centres in the United States to the abandonment of Afghan workers following the Taliban’s return to power, GardaWorld has been embroiled in a string of scandals in recent years both in Canada and abroad. The Montreal-based multinational has risen to the top of the global private security industry through questionable government investments, serving Western interests wherever elites need protection or an armed force.
Subsidized global expansion
Founded in 1995 in Montreal, GardaWorld quickly became the largest privately owned security company. It has more than 130,000 employees in 45 countries and has provided security services in conflict zones in Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Libya, and Somalia, among many others.
Much of this vast international expansion was facilitated by a $300 million investment from the Quebec government in 2022. The investment of public funds, made in the form of preferred shares, came as the multinational was ramping up acquisitions around the world.
An access to information request by The North Star reveals that nearly 100 contracts totalling $1.6 million have been awarded to GardaWorld by the City of Montreal since 2020.
These agreements include leasing the iconic orange traffic cones to GardaWorld for one dollar per day, as well as providing security at several municipal facilities, including libraries and borough halls.
A company that profits from outsourcing and strikebreaking
This type of outsourcing is a central issue in the labour dispute that has pitted the City of Montreal against its blue-collar workers since the end of 2024. Montreal blue-collar city workers interviewed by The North Star say the use of these agents leads to high staff turnover, limited knowledge of sites, and a loss of expertise compared to municipal employees.
Last month, the Canadian Industrial Relations Board reprimanded the Bank of Canada for using GardaWorld employees to replace striking security personnel. GardaWorld also offers a range of physical security services to companies whose employees are on strike. These services include, in particular, managing access to construction sites blocked by picket lines and “crowd control.”
Unions have criticized the company for lobbying against anti-scab laws and for hiring replacement workers when its own employees have walked off the job.
GardaWorld on the international stage
In 2025, GardaWorld Federal Services, the U.S. subsidiary of the Montreal-based multinational, secured a contract valued at several million U.S. dollars to provide security personnel to the South Florida Detention Facility, the migrant detention centre also known by the nickname “Alligator Alcatraz.” The centre, which played a key role in the Trump administration’s immigration policy, has been heavily criticized for its appalling detention conditions: lack of adequate healthcare, denial of access to lawyers, unsanitary conditions, and violence.
On February 13, several hundred protesters gathered outside GardaWorld’s headquarters in Montreal to denounce the company’s partnership with ICE. Before the protest—which was violently suppressed by the Montreal police—a member of Solidarity Across Borders denounced the company’s business model in a speech:
“When a company chooses to support or collaborate with policies that fuel mass detention, family separation, fear, and the criminalization of migrants, that is not neutral—it is never neutral.”
On the other side of the world, GardaWorld had been providing security for the British Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan for several years until the Taliban seized power in 2021. The company then left 183 employees who had been providing security for the embassy without any news or pay. Many of these employees were subjected to violence by the Taliban while being ignored by their former employer.
“GardaWorld was supposed to support us and [help us get repatriated], but no, Garda was just here to make money,” one of the former employees told the Journal de Montréal.
In an interview with Radio-Canada, a GardaWorld spokesperson declined to comment on specific contracts but stated that the company “always operates with respect for human rights, personal dignity, employee safety, and rigorous governance.”
These statements from GardaWorld stand in stark contrast to the findings of an Amnesty International report on Alligator Alcatraz:
“People arbitrarily detained in ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ are living in inhuman and unsanitary conditions including overflowing toilets with fecal matter seeping into where people are sleeping, limited access to showers, exposure to insects without protective measures, [and] lights on 24 hours a day.”
A geopolitical tool?
Beyond the media controversies surrounding GardaWorld, the Canadian company plays an increasingly prominent role in the security apparatus of Western powers. The operations it undertakes go far beyond security at shopping malls and municipal buildings; GardaWorld operates as a militarized private security firm active in several countries destabilized by Canada, the United States, and their allies.
This role as a watchdog for Western imperialists partly explains the enthusiasm with which the Quebec government invested $300 million in public funds in GardaWorld, as well as the fervour with which the SPVM cracked down on the few hundred protesters gathered outside its headquarters in February.
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