The ratios of private security to state police range from two or three to one in places like Canada and the US to about five or six to one in places like South Africa. In Canada the police, perhaps more than elsewhere, have been prepared to face the police crisis directly and openly. One of the engagements that developed at the Montreal conference was between Ian Blair and the senior executives of several very large private security agencies. Private security sometimes exists within nodal assemblages that link them closely to state agencies. The idea of the regulatory state is both a descriptive and an explanatory idea at the same time as it is a normative idea. It is used to argue that states have been, and should be, shifting their governing focus from being providers to being the primary auspice of governance. Diversity affects the providers but not the auspices of governance.