link cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/32662355
Here are the contractors who helped build Alligator Alcatraz
The other state contractors include Deployed Resources LLC, the port-a-potty company Doodie Calls, GardaWorld, Garner Environmental Services, Gothams LLC, Granny’s Alliance, Longview International Technological Solutions and SLS-WSP JV.
GardaWorld Cash, one of several companies affiliated with GardaWorld — one of the world’s largest security services companies, according to its website — gave $5,000 to DeSantis’ Empower Parents political action committee in 2018. The political organization, which went by Friends of Ron DeSantis at the time, was created to support DeSantis’ first bid for governor.
GardaWorld has also been eyed for Florida’s immigration agenda before — it was one of the vendors picked by the state to fly migrants out of Florida. A representative from GardaWorld did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Wednesday evening.
It wasn't clear to me where Canada comes in or what the ownership is, but clicking over to About GardaWorld it is clarified.
After identifying an opportunity to consolidate the fragmented private security industry, Stephan Crétier founded GardaWorld (then Trans-Quebec Security Inc.) in 1995 with a $25,000 investment derived from a second mortgage on his home. Only a few years later, the company was making $40 million annually in revenue. Over the past 30 years, he has built one of the world’s largest security services companies organically and through strategic M&A.
Mr. Crétier remains a highly-driven and engaged entrepreneur leading a strong bench of exceptionally talented and empowered managers. GardaWorld differentiates itself through a unique performance-based culture with strict accountability for operational performance. The company adheres to a deep ownership mentality with Mr. Crétier and management holding a majority equity ownership stake in the business, which is now valued at C$14 billion.
Scroll down to read their "timeline". Each item has the feeling of being immense crimes.
If people paid attention to his history, yeah, they'd see it. What Carney did at the Bank of Canada and his various comments there are pretty telling.
The 2008 financial crisis, we avoided the worst of it because Carney and them were 'slower' to roll out the same dangerous lending practices that we saw down south, but they were still going forward with them -- we just had less exposure at the time the US popped, so they were able to quietly prop up the big banks (and just the big banks, they let the smaller ones figure it out themselves) using the CMHC. Canada's small FIs, Credit Unions and such, got through it without a scratch, because they weren't in to risky convoluted mortgage block trading, and had various safeguards in place already like a shared liquidity pool. Carney's reaction to Canada doing so well in 2008, was to demand that the industry align more with the international standards which had allowed for those issues to occur. Things like the shared liquidity pool were dismantled as a result. Fast forward, and Thiel and his buddies pop SVB -- and suddenly regulators are making noise like "Maybe banks and FIs should have some kind of shared liquidity pool for this sort of issue!". Carney's comments at various events also displayed a blatant lack of understanding for the smaller financial industry players in Canada -- likening Canada's credit unions to spain's private banks (which were run by oligarch-ish families, with zero underwriting due diligence).
The guy trusted the international community hierarchy / structure, more than the Canadian system. He trusted that hierarchy even after it had failed, while the Canadian approach had more success. He forced Canada's FI's to align with worse-practices, just because it aligned to international norms. He is not pro-Canada, nor is he pro-small business.
He's still likely better than PP would've been.