A Contemporary classic

Contemporary Security Canada opened its doors to the media for a July 30 tour of its 333 Terminal Avenue recruitment office.

The Salt Lake City-based company and its partners Aeroguard of Toronto and United Protection Services of Edmonton are seeking 5,000 people to staff the airport-style security checkpoints at 2010 Winter Olympics and Paralympics venues. Contemporary is under contract with the RCMP Vancouver 2010 Integrated Security Unit for more than $97 million. That makes it the single largest non-VANOC contractor.

The event started at 9:30 a.m. A few minutes later, I received a phone call from the VANOC media relations department about a 9:45 a.m. teleconference on the organizing committee's campaign to seek seconded employees from companies and governments. Seems that there was a communications miscue between VANOC and V2010 ISU. The teleconference was eventually delayed until 2 p.m.

Other signs that Contemporary's allegiance is to the RCMP and not VANOC were evident. All the laptop computers in the office were by Lenovo and the hand-sanitizer was the Johnson & Johnson Purell brand. Lenovo and J&J Olympic sponsorship contracts ended with Beijing 2008. Acer and Alda Pharmaceuticals are the official VANOC computer and hand germ-killer companies.