Thank you very much for the great question.
Perhaps I'll start with the cost. It was $1.2 billion last year, and that was in addition to a number of other costs that we've seen increasing across the auto insurance industry. Our vehicles are all becoming much more expensive to repair. The industry did look at ways in which we could mitigate the impact of this on our own, prior of course to the great collaboration we're seeing now.
One way is to incentivize the installation of aftermarket tracking devices so that, when your vehicle is stolen, we can see where it is and we can get it back for you. That, of course, will lead to a reduction in costs. Those can be upwards of $500 to install, and a number of insurers have been waiving that fee or incentivizing folks to do it by not charging the surcharge you may have to pay if you have a high-risk vehicle. Those are some ways we're trying to incentivize.
We're also making sure we get consumer information out to customers at the point of sale, including when to install a bar on your steering wheel. You might want to put your key in a Faraday bag. We've been giving those away as well.
We are very much trying to do what we can on our end to incentivize and limit the impacts of theft.
In terms of what we can do all together, again, it's not going to be just one government and one solution. With respect to the federal government's action plan, we implore you to look at all options available to you, from having stiffer penalties to resourcing prosecution to reprioritizing CBSA towards auto theft and imposing the 72-hour rule. Those things are critical. Provincially we need to examine investing in enforcement teams and look at revinning.
I'll stop there because I see we're at time.