Thieves steal a car each six minutes on common in Canada — and never even the justice minister is immune.
A report warning of an increase within the variety of automotive thefts on this nation was revealed Thursday — simply as CBC Information realized that two government-owned vehicles offered to Justice Minister David Lametti have been stolen.
In keeping with a Authorities of Canada doc, Lametti’s government-owned Toyota Highlander XLE was stolen on February 11, 2021 and was by no means recovered.
Nearly precisely two years later, on February 13, 2023, a distinct Toyota Highlander XLE assigned to Lametti was stolen. That one was recovered the identical month; the odometer learn 24,408 kilometres when it was discovered however the doc doesn’t say what the mileage was when it was stolen.
The justice minister has been driving Ford Expeditions ever since, says the doc.
In a brand new report, the Canadian Finance and Leasing Affiliation (CFLA) says Toronto alone has seen a 300 per cent surge in car thefts since 2015. The group estimates that automotive thefts are costing the nation roughly $1 billion yearly.
The report says that after these autos are stolen, they’re chopped up for elements or given new car identification numbers and resold, generally abroad.
The CFLA says that whereas it’s arduous to trace stolen autos, the potential for big earnings and the “relative ease of eradicating autos from the nation” point out that unrecovered autos are often shipped overseas or resold with faux identification numbers.
The CFLA means that organized crime is a number one offender in thefts of autos which might be by no means recovered as a result of organized crime tends to ship stolen autos overseas. Thirty years in the past, the affiliation mentioned, 90 per cent of autos stolen in Ontario have been recovered; that fee has since dropped to 50 per cent.
“Autos stolen for functions aside from revenue, reminiscent of joyriding or transportation to be used in different crimes, are usually recovered by police,” says the report.
“Exporting is a distinct story. These autos are more likely to disappear without end.”
In 2010, the federal authorities launched the Tackling Auto Theft and Property Crime Act. It created a separate offence for theft of a motorcar carrying a compulsory jail sentence of six years on third and subsequent convictions.
It additionally created an offence for altering, destroying or eradicating a car identification quantity and gave the Canada Border Providers Company (CBSA) permission to cease suspected stolen property earlier than it may be exported from the nation.
Stolen autos despatched abroad are sometimes shipped in containers on cargo ships, says the report. The shipper should declare to the CBSA what’s within the container; generally thieves say they’re delivery vehicles and generally they don’t.
These delivery stolen autos usually declare the containers maintain one thing else that matches the car’s weight, reminiscent of washing machines.
Border officers can establish stolen autos by evaluating the car identification quantity to the one on the declaration kind. However given the large variety of containers on transport ships, the report says, CBSA officers are solely capable of look at a small variety of them and should as a substitute depend on “intelligence, expertise and experience to establish containers for inspection that arose suspicion.”
The report requires a extra coordinated nationwide effort to curb automotive thefts.
“We urgently want public education schemes on theft prevention, the re-establishment of provincial auto theft groups, and protocols for reporting financed autos exported by means of id theft,” mentioned Michael Rothe, president of the CFLA, in a media assertion.