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 Tuesday » January 15 » 2008
 
Commissionaires report for Afghanistan tour of duty
Team to screen arrivals at Kandahar Airfield
 
David Pugliese
The Ottawa Citizen


Tuesday, January 15, 2008


They're a familiar sight in federal government offices throughout Ottawa and in other locations across the country, but now members of the Canadian Corps of Commissionaires are shipping out for duty in Afghanistan.

The organization has signed a deal for six of its employees to work at Kandahar Airfield screening NATO military personnel as they arrive there.

"It's a first for our organization and it's quite exciting for us," said Doug Briscoe, executive director of Commissionaires Canada.

The organization has more than 18,000 personnel across Canada who provide security and other services at airports, commercial offices, municipal, provincial and federal government buildings, hospitals and embassies, among other sites.

The group, which employs mainly former military and RCMP personnel, has joined forces with Calgary-based ATCO Frontec. That firm has a contract to provide various air traffic-related services at the Kandahar base. The contract is part of a trial and could be expanded, Mr. Briscoe said.

The six-person team of commissionaires, four men and two women, were in Ottawa yesterday for a briefing session. They expect to be in Kandahar tomorrow. They will be involved in the issuing of security passes to NATO personnel as they arrive at the airfield, said Mr. Briscoe.

It isn't unusual for as many as 500 people to be processed through security during a four-hour period, he added.

The commissionaires won't be going outside the sprawling base, home to more than 12,000 personnel.

"The job itself I don't think will be any great hardship, as it's nothing that we haven't done before," said John Saulnier, a 60-year-old commissionaire who usually works at Canadian Forces Base Gagetown in New Brunswick.

He was one of more than 160 volunteers who applied for the positions. The selection focused on former military personnel who had served in overseas operations. They were also required to have a NATO-level security clearance.

Mr. Saulnier, a former member of the First Battalion, The Royal Canadian Regiment, served 26 years in the Canadian Forces. He has served tours in Cyprus, Egypt and Germany.

The new job was an opportunity to see a part of the world that many of the soldiers he came in contact with at CFB Gagetown talked about on a daily basis, Mr. Saulnier said.

The commissionaires, he added, will be dealing with military personnel and Afghans who are given access to the airfield. The military is still in control of who comes in and out of the base, as well as vehicle inspections.

"We're not armed and we're not the military, but if the state of emergency does go up, we have flak vests and we have helmets we can wear."

Mr. Saulnier, who has two grown daughters, acknowledges that being away from home is going to be hard on his wife. The contract is for a one-year period; the commissionaires will serve on a schedule under which they work three months and then have holidays for one month.

Mr. Briscoe said Commissionaires Canada is interested in similar work in the future.

"We'd be more than willing to help the Canadian Forces out in any way we could," he said. "This is just allowing us to explore that a little bit to see if it could work out."