By Ramakrishna Malkapuram, Commercial Service Delivery Manager

Emis Daniel

Emis Daniel’s rise to fame and recognition story started on June 15, 2017, when he started with ASP as an event security guard at the Burlington sound of music festival. Since then, Emis has never looked back. He joined Widdicombe Place, a retirement home operated by QuadReal property management. His sincerity and commitment to his job is simply outstanding. In a very short period, he has earned tremendous respect not just from his co-workers but also from the client. In recognition to his outstanding service at Widdicombe Place, the client requested to award him with the site supervisor position in September 2022. He continued to excel in his new role as a site supervisor by not only providing his expertise at the facility but also by training the new ASP staff. His passion towards his job is evident in his hard work. Congratulations Emis.

Varinder Panesar

Varinder Panesar joined ASP on May 06, 2020, as a casual guard. He was cross trained at several residential sites. His consistency paved way for him to become the site supervisor at Widdicombe Place on November 29, 2021. He demonstrated a great attitude and always showed inclination to learn and innovate. His consistency and sincerity was rewarded when he got promoted again to become night shift mobile patrol supervisor on September 27 2022. He continues to excel in his new role. Kudos to Varinder for his hard work!

Ranjan Sethi

Ranjan Sethi joined ASP on August 2, 2020, as a TTC casual guard. He demonstrated good work ethic and worked at various TTC sites. His consistency towards his job duties helped him to get promoted to become full time respite security specialist in February 2021. His hard work and consistency got rewarded again when he got promoted as a night shift mobile patrol supervisor on June 12, 2022. He continues to excel in his role. Kudos to Ranjan for great job !


By Kat Szumacher, Operations Manager

ASP’s hard work and commitment to success led to big wins yet again. Thanks to the dedication of our team, and our ability to collaborate and work together when challenges arise, we are pleased to announce that the City of Toronto Corporate Security Management team has awarded ASP with the Respite contract for another year.

Servicing the City of Toronto Respites has been no small task. Since taking up the challenge in early 2020, at the beginning of the pandemic, we understood that in order to be successful, we’d have some hard work ahead of us. The City of Toronto Respite facilities have traditionally been high-activity sites, requiring a rigorous selection process and extensive training prior to site deployment. We faced lockdowns, mask enforcements, and required specialized training to best service the shelter users and our client. This past year, we revamped several elements of onboarding, training, and recruitment, which have yielded overwhelmingly positive reviews from the City during our monthly meetings. These efforts have had tangible and resounding results that have been felt at all levels, especially by City of Toronto Corporate Security Management, and resulted in us being rewarded the contract for our third year!

There have been so many projects and initiatives started since October, from the PTS entry launch, Tracktik reporting updates, MPS realignment, scheduling float and reserve staff, our probationary review process, onboarding and training updates, guard matrix audits, and others. I would like to thank everyone who made this happen as it was a team effort by so many incredibly talented people across the organization.

A special thanks to:

  • Antoniette Freeman
  • Dave Harris
  • David Ramlagan
  • Fatema Pipalyawala
  • Gurdeep Bathal
  • Harjinder Singh
  • Harvinder Singh
  • Jacinth Rose
  • Jatin Sood
  • Jay Ritchie
  • Kadina McKenzie
  • Keba Walters
  • Khan Sultan
  • Kirti Khatri
  • Lucy Nguyen
  • Manish Munukuntla
  • MD Abdul Halim
  • Noah Thompson
  • Phil Marinelli
  • Ranjan Sethi
  • Saikrishna Penjarala
  • Sean Gallagher
  • Shine Mathew
  • Tristan Fuller
  • Varinder Panesar
  • Wendel Sylvester

Thank you to Recruitment, Training, Administration, HR, IT, MPS Team, and our Respite Rapids. And of course, to all of our Site Supervisors and Respite Specialists – this win would not have been achieved without you. Thank you for your continued hard work in making sure our clients know that to ASP, #SecurityMatters.


By Mary Christidis, Operations Manager, Security

We teamed up with the Greater Toronto Airports Authority (GTAA) to spread some festive cheer by doing a surprise pop up with our team to hand out some fun I Am Toronto Pearson branded swag and gift cards. What a great way to kick off the holiday season! Thank you GTAA!!!


By Laurel Woodhouse, Health and Safety Manager

As a worker, did you know that you have three important rights? These include:

  1. The right to know about hazards at work and the right to get information, supervision and instruction to protect your health and safety on the job.
  2. The right to participate in identifying and solving workplace health and safety problems either through a health and safety representative or a worker member of a joint health and safety committee.
  3. The right to refuse work that you believe is dangerous to your health and safety or that of any other worker in the workplace.

The Right to Know:

Workers have the right to know about any potential hazards to which they may be exposed in the workplace. The primary way that workers can become aware of hazards in the workplace is to be informed and instructed on how to protect their health and safety, including health and safety related to the use of machinery, equipment, working conditions, processes and hazardous substances.

The employer can enable the worker’s right to know in various ways, such as making sure they get:

  • Information about the hazards in the work they are doing
  • Training to do the work in a healthy and safe way
  • Competent supervision to stay healthy and safe

The Right to Participate:

Workers have the right to be part of the process of identifying and resolving workplace health and safety concerns. This right is expressed through direct worker participation in health and safety in the workplace and/ or through worker membership on joint health and safety committees or through worker health and safety representatives.

Workers have the right to refuse work that they believe is dangerous to either their own health and safety or that of another worker in the workplace. For example, workers may refuse work if they believe their health and safety is endangered by any equipment they are to use or by the physical conditions of the workplace. The worker should explain to their employer why they believe the work is unsafe. Although they cannot not leave the work site, they can ensure they are in a safe place. If the worker and employer disagree, the Safety Worker Representative is called to assist with determining controls. All parties must agree that the work is safe to continue. The jurisdiction of the work will determine how the right to refuse is applied. All jurisdictions in Canada have adopted the philosophy of the Internal Responsibility System (IRS) where everyone in the workplace is responsible for their own safety and for the safety of co-workers. The IRS puts in place an employee-employer partnership in ensuring a safe and disease-free workplace.


By Laurel Woodhouse, Health and Safety Manager

Who We Are?

LifeSpeak is a leading platform for mental health and wellbeing, available whenever and wherever users need specialized information and guidance on problems that affect their daily life.

What We Do?

LifeSpeak helps employees thrive so they can stay focused, healthy, and productive.

For you to develop a stable, healthy mindset no matter what life throws at you, LifeSpeak has gathered its top mental health specialists to offer you useful resources, tactics, and tools.

Mobile

Access to all programming while also enabling users to download videos for offline viewing, stream podcasts, participate in live ‘Ask the Expert’ webchats and manage their account, right from their phone.

Computer

This web-based service offers anonymous access to hundreds of short videos. Our full range of formats includes videos, podcasts, tip sheets, quizzes, and more.

Tablet

LifeSpeak empowers people to take action before a life challenge or issue becomes critical. It’s a proactive approach to mental health and wellbeing.

Download our app in the appstore or googleplay: https://asp.lifespeak.com/


By Robin Stevenson, Manager, Canine

The ASP K9 teams have a wide range of skills and interests outside of their dog related expertise at work. This article focuses on two particular handlers who have unique interests in an exciting and physically challenging hobby.

First, we have Emilie Gagne, who handles EDD Canine Jordan and has worked with ASP for over a year. Emilie has had a lifetime interest in the Rodeo, and five years ago she took that interest to the next level by joining a bullriding school in Alberta.

From there, she never looked back. Emilie has honed her skills to where she now competes across Canada and the US, winning numerous events. Bull-riding is not an easy sport to master, and Emilie suffered a setback just over a year ago when she broke her hip after being thrown. Fortunately for us, Emilie fully recovered and is back riding and competing.

Next up we have Jenna Belshaw, who handles EDD Canine Samba. Jenna started riding horses at the ripe old age of 3! She was hooked and spent her weekends and summers riding and learning horse care. By 13, Jenna got her first horse and continued to be exposed to recognized experts in the horse industry.

Two of the biggest influencers are Bryn and Mike Robertson, who are renowned for Barrel Horse training. Jenna began her competitive career in barrel racing at age 16 and has not looked back. The goal is to ride a set pattern around 3 barrels in the fastest time. Jenna has achieved multiple accomplishments including countless OBRA 1d championships and rodeo wins. Jenna credits a lot of her wins lately to her main horse Norman, a 12-year-old quarter horse who comes off the racetrack. She continues to compete all over Ontario, Quebec and the United States, traveling almost every weekend.


By Daniel McCormack, Quality Control Manager

Hello ASP team! I am excited to be writing about the training we recently held at YYC. The team at YYC has always met our contractual requirements concerning annually recertifying guards to continue working their posts. However, after careful thought, we were able to craft a program that reviewed the critical materials required while also allowing all classifications to see what each other is responsible to complete on shift.

With the help of our National Training Manager, Mr. David Ramlagan, we were able to inject some laughter and excitement with the Kahoot quizzes. The overwhelmingly positive feedback suggests that it was a big hit, and as such, we will bring it into all future training — new hire, recurrent or specialized.

These mixed classes were also a terrific way for the ASP family to reconnect after a trying period where we had to isolate, distance, and delay in-person training.

Our participants were all smiles when they got to engage with the content alongside peers they have not seen in months or more. It was not just the value of the information that was taken away from the classes.

David also supplied our site with enough tablets to move the training paperwork, and paperwork of any sort, to a digital format. Over the coming weeks, we will be moving whatever we can online so that the company or client can access necessary information for any staff member in one place: audits, training records, etc.

It is going to be a colossal leap forward in the efficiency of our admin and audit processes. I know that our supervisor team are very excited to cut the time of the audits down by at least half with our new formats.

Lastly, I would like to give a shout out to some of our allstars from the past quarter:

  • Lakhveer Sandhu – you stood up against some lessthan-pleased employees at the access point and did not let them cause a breach. Keep up that great work!
  • To all of you who stepped up to take overtime shifts while we onboarded new hires – we are enormously proud of the teamwork we have seen over the past months!

Until next time ASP, take care out there!


By Kevin Hepburn, Acting Operations Manager

Unsung Heroes

Who is an unsung hero? “One who does great deeds but receives little or no recognition for them.” I’d like to recognize a few of our staff whose recent actions should be recognized in this category.

Recently, ASP Terminal Patroller Kanchan Sarin was assigned Security 3 near gate 52. Prior to a medical call being dispatched from Operations, Kanchan saw a Calgary Police Service (CPS) Officer assisting a passenger in medical distress. Kanchan was proactive and started to assist immediately by setting up a privacy screen, and she began redirecting pedestrian traffic prior to a request from SOC/AOC Operations. Good job and well-done Kanchan!

Being placed in a difficult situation is part of a patroller’s everyday routine. One of our Supervisors was recently placed in this situation and handled it with grace and poise. ASP Supervisor Taranjit Sidhu was on her airside/groundside patrol part of her shift when she was dispatched to the Terminal Arrivals area that was congested due to a high volume of vehicles awaiting arriving passengers and Taxi’s. Other agencies were dispatched to the scene, however, the problem worsened.

The arrivals level was blocked, and vehicles were no longer moving which resulted in a safety concern. Taranjit arrived on scene and took control by moving vehicles and clearing the entire area. Our operations team watched and applauded her for her efforts, acknowledging her with a job well done over the radio! Well done, Taranjit.

Post and Hiring Update

With the completion of a three-month trial by CATSA at NPS-B (Non-Passenger Screening – Post ‘Bravo’) and a reopening of NPS-A (Non-Passenger Screening – Post ‘Alpha’) these posts have now returned and are in operation with our ASP Guards. During the closure of these posts, we were able to complete an aggressive job fair and onboarding of new employees to increase our staffing requirements overall.


By Mary Christidis, Operations Manager

Jasneet Singh

“Please know that a few weeks ago I was in Terminal 1 of the Toronto Pearson International Airport, where I received excellent service from Jasneet Singh- ASP specialist. She went over and beyond the call of duty to provide me with information and guidance as it related to my travel questions and concerns. I was so impressed by her dedication to her career, and by her fine work ethic. She deserves to be recognized, and I hope that she is rewarded for her fine efforts!”

MEMBER OF THE PUBLIC

Supinder Khangura

“I attended the gates today and I was speaking to the guard at V313A she was very knowledgeable and knew her post order very well. She smiled and told me that she loved her job and it was very reassuring having her at this post. I think it’s good to recognize hard working individuals.”

APRIL MCCONKEY, OFFICER, CONSTRUCTION SECURITY PLANNING

Pirasanthy Kandavel

“Please commend Pirasanthy Kandavel for a job well done! I appreciate reading the reports filed and this helps with follow-up to stakeholders who need a letter to remind them of the advisory.”

AGAIN, JOB WELL DONE TO SANTHY!


By Mary Christidis, Operations Manager

The Eye on Safety Awards acknowledge and celebrate a culture of safety and security at Toronto Pearson International Airport.

Indira Marwah

On Wednesday, June 8th, 2022, at approximately 23:47, ASP Access Control Guard, Indira Marwah was stationed at Terminal 3, Door G120.

Indira observed a male passenger attempting to backflow from the baggage hall and into the secure area. She remained calm and followed her Post Orders, advised SOC, and maintained a line of sight to the subject passenger.

She got the attention of an ASP Door Patrol guard nearby who was able to stop the breach. Indira’s immediate actions under the pressure of a security breach prevented a containment situation, which could have had a significant impact on operations during a high-volume period.

Well done, Indira!

Rushmika Nadan

Rushmika Nadan was nominated for an Eye on Safety Award for noticing that FA3022 was not correctly secured while in the area performing other duties.

Her keen observation resulted in SOC properly taking the reader offline again and, in turn, ensured no unauthorized access through the PSL would be possible.

Great work, Rushmika!