Cloaked in a remote corner of Coquitlam's industrial southwest, there's a multimillion-dollar team of "risk managers" - ex-cops, former special ops and private eyes - that until now, you weren't supposed to know about.
There's no name on the door at the end of Fawcett Avenue, just a CCTV camera and a buzzer.
"In fact, we're not even here," says Ken Cahoon, Canpro Global's director and managing partner with Robert Burns, CEO. "This is an empty office. But we are within a hundred yards of here, I can tell you that."
The high secrecy around their operation isn't without warrant, as former clients of Canpro include diplomats, heads of state, A-list celebrities, known gangsters and judicial authorities.
And what started here -or rather, very near here - as a private investigations firm 26 years ago, now has offices in countries around the world and has branched into every aspect of "risk management."
And if that term sounds intentionally vague or overly broad, it is. But Cahoon and Burns have made a successful business out of mitigating every type of risk to a business's bottom line while maintaining utmost discretion. That means everything from teaching occupational safety, drug screening and loss prevention to doing private investigations, search and rescue and VIP security.
And while much of the intrigue surrounding the company centres on its teams of security professionals in conflict zones from Iraq to Afghanistan to Sudan - its "underwater knife-fighters," as Burns calls Canpro's most elite security squads - the CEO is quick to distance that part of Canpro from the "mercenary army" reputation of other such security firms.
"We're selling a Canadian solution. It's less offensive, more proactive and all about mitigating risk as opposed to trying to face it," Burns says. "And it was actually us that went to the UN and asked that they bring international standards for private security."
Now Canpro Global is partnered with the United Nation's Office of Drugs and Crime to develop and enforce those standards. And if that wasn't big enough news for the little Coquitlam private-eye firm that could, just last month Canpro partnered with Toronto-based investigations firm King-Reed & Associates to form the largest risk mitigation and investigation firm in the country and one of the biggest in the world with 450 employees in 23 offices and combined annual revenues totalling more than $40 million.
"We were in 14 countries doing operations last year," Burns says, listing everything from rescue consulting for South American mining firms to protecting Canadian and foreign diplomats in Asia and the Middle East.
But for Burns and Cahoon, one of their most rewarding jobs lately wasn't a risky mission into a war torn country but something right here in their own backyard.
At the Vancouver 2010 Olympics, Canpro literally had its fingerprints all over every part of the Games' venue, medal and VIP security.
"Of course, it wasn't all hard security dropping from helicopters," Burns says.
In fact, much of it was pretty low key and leisurely protection work, like riding snowmobiles in Whistler with model Cindy Crawford, hanging out with Wayne Gretzky or watching the men's gold medal hockey game with actor Nicole Kidman and her country music crooning husband Keith Urban.
And if you visited any of the public live sites around Vancouver during the Games or watched events on TV, you probably saw Canpro professionals going about their business. And when you weren't meant to see them, you didn't.
"We are not a security guard company guarding parking lots," Burns says, noting that discretion and professionalism are what the company was built on. "We go after the most high-risk contracts."
So what's the newest big threat to businesses and governments that needs mitigating?
At the bleeding edge of modern risk management, Cahoon says, isn't so much protecting against violent criminals or workplace theft, but something called online reputation risk management.
That means protecting a company from the brand fallout caused by cyber attacks or by one of its own employees unwittingly "oversharing" something about their personal life or about the company on Twitter or Facebook that could negatively affect the company's bottom line.
"You can't stop someone from being a bonehead online," Cahoon said. "But we can go in, find it and then stem the tide."
It's a new dimension to risk management, and with their headquarters for online investigations already right here in Coquitlam, Canpro seems to have it, like everything else, locked up.
