Car theft, a real scourge in Canada – 06/11/2024 at 08:28

For Zachary Siciliani, locking his car is no longer enough: he now has to install a “tracker” in the face of the recent phenomenal increase in vehicle thefts in Canada, with the port of Montreal as a hub. A “national crisis” which worries insurers.

In this largest city in Quebec, Zachary Siciliani had his car stolen and no break-in was noted. “I always parked my car there and then one day it disappeared,” he told AFP. An operation which was certainly carried out using an electronic unit allowing the frequency of the key to be intercepted, the police explained.

Since then, Zachary Siciliani has a new Mazda 3, but this one he decided to protect with a tracking tool. “Our insurance company told us our rates would increase significantly if we didn’t have a tracker in the car,” he explains.

Zachary Siciliani is far from being an isolated case. Large cities in eastern Canada have been hit by an explosion in the number of car thefts for several months. Destination: Africa, Asia, Europe or the Middle East… where they are sold on the black market.

– “Foreign markets” –

According to the latest police figures, the two cities most affected are Montreal and Toronto, where thefts have increased by 150% over the past six years. From 2021 to 2023, the number of automobile thefts increased by 58% in Quebec and 48% in Ontario, the two most populous provinces in the country.

“Technology makes life easier for drivers, but it also makes vehicle theft easier,” Scott Wade, detective inspector with the Ontario provincial police, told AFP.

And for experts, this spectacular increase in thefts is a direct consequence of the pandemic, during which restrictions limited the production capacity of car manufacturers.

With the breakdown in supply chains on a global scale, “supply was at its lowest” while there was “very high demand”, Yannick Desmarais, of the police department, explains to AFP of the city of Montreal.

A situation which has not escaped organized crime: “this has encouraged organized crime networks to launch themselves to supply foreign markets,” says Scott Wade.

In 2023, the number of groups linked to organized crime behind car thefts increased by 62% compared to the previous year, according to the federal police.

The Insurance Bureau of Canada is now calling this problem a “national crisis.” Private auto insurers in Canada paid out 1.5 billion Canadian dollars (more than a billion euros) in theft claims in 2023, an increase of 254% since 2018.

– “Colander” –

In Canada, most of the “stolen vehicles will converge on Montreal and its port, which has a strategic position”, Yannick Desmarais told AFP.

“Montreal is considered a sieve,” adds Georges Iny, director of the association for the protection of motorists.

This port on the St. Lawrence River with access to the Atlantic coast connects eastern Canada and the industrial heart of North America to more than 140 countries. More than a million containers pass through it each year.

“The challenge is to intercept the small percentage of illicit goods without harming our economy by slowing down the fluidity of trade,” Annie Beauséjour, regional director for Quebec at the Canada Border Services Agency, explains to AFP.

Justin Trudeau’s government, which organized a national summit on the subject a few weeks ago, notably promised to ban imports of these hacking devices. He also announced increased penalties for car thieves and more resources for the border agency.

In the meantime, in Toronto as in Montreal, groups are multiplying on social networks to help each other and locate stolen cars.

But in the comments, many often tell the unfortunate people that they would be better off resigning themselves, because their car is probably already in a container headed abroad.