G4S explains its Canadian guards don’t carry guns

Communications director Katie McLeod of the Canadian arm of U.K.-based G4S says the company’s Canadian guards are not armed while working.

An armed G4S guard killed three co-workers and wounded a fourth in 2012 in Edmonton while they were servicing a University of Alberta campus ATM machine. McLeod said G4S has since sold its armoured car division, which required staff to be armed.

The company employees 9,000 people in Canada.

Shares in the security company G4S fell on Monday after it emerged that Omar Mateen had worked for the firm. The company said Mateen was subject to a detailed screening and checks by U.S. law enforcement, which reported no findings to G4S.

Mateen has been identified as the man who killed 49 people and wounded more than 50 others in an attack early Sunday on a gay nightclub in Orlando, Fla.

The FBI has reported he was interviewed twice in 2013 after he made inflammatory comments to co-workers and, in 2014, he was found to have had ties to an American suicide bomber.

McLeod says that all G4S guards in Canada must obtain a provincial security licence before being considered for employment.

They must take an approved course and a police check is undertaken by the province. She said G4S also uses a third party to undertake a five-year history verification on all employees and contractors before hiring.

G4S, a global security company, is active in some 100 countries and has 610,000 employees.

News from © Canadian Press Enterprises Inc. 2016