In fact he’s very pragmatic about the new challenges coming to people like himself who are responsible for health-care security across a broad network in the lower mainland of British Columbia. With a declining crime rate and aging population, he says security professionals need to be planning today for what their jobs will look like in the future.

“Crime is a young man’s game,” says MacAlister as he stands at Women and Children’s Health Centre in Vancouver. It is one of the province’s largest facilities and the place where he has mentored many health-care security professionals over the years. He came here to BC Children’s Hospital in 1989 to develop a comprehensive fire safety and security program at the Oak Street site.

“The challenge is to keep planning and thinking ahead of what this environment will look like in 20 years.”

MacAlister says the challenge for the burgeoning security industry is this: How do we continue to grow the industry when the crime rates are plummeting across the western world?

According to a recent FBI report, violent crime dropped in 2009 — for the third consecutive year — even though historically crime goes up during a recession. Property crimes dropped for the seventh straight year. Canadian trends mirror this data, says MacAlister.

“The fact is, we’re an aging population, and I think the challenge for us is to look ahead and design systems to meet that increased demand for health services and design systems in unique ways,” he says.

“We’re going to have to deliver health care differently in the future. More people are receiving care in their homes. We have home care workers who go to people’s homes. We know how to design a program to make physicians or nurses safe, but how do you make an environment safe for a health-care worker who goes into a client’s home and delivers health care?”

MacAlister was born in Bridge of Weir, Scotland, just west of Glasgow and immigrated to Canada’s West Coast with his parents and younger brother when he was nine years old. His brother is a criminology professor at Simon Fraser University. MacAlister got his start in the security industry at the age of 21 working in a maximum security prison. He then moved on to the University of B.C. MacAlister has spent two decades in health care,  and 18 months ago became the Executive Director of Lower Mainland Integrated Protection Services for the Fraser Health, Vancouver Coastal Health, Providence Health Care and Provincial Health Services Authority.

“I have always thought it easier to design a secure prison than a secure hospital,” says MacAlister. “People look at me like I’m crazy when I say that but it’s all about being able to control movement. In a prison you can control movement to a complete degree; you don’t have that ease with hospitals. It’s one of the things that attracted me to health care — it’s difficult, it’s complex.”