You're absolutely right to phrase it that way, that we are all victims. When you deal with things like theft of a motor vehicle, where it's mandatory to carry insurance in every province, then we all bear the costs of theft. I think Monsieur Petit was bringing that up as well, that we can't just look at someone who gets assaulted and say it's too bad for him, I wasn't assaulted, I wasn't affected by that crime. In matters like this, property crimes do affect a much larger percentage of the population. Arson affects all homeowners who pay house insurance premiums, things like that.
On the issue of the different types of theft over $5,000 or under $5,000, I want to thank you for this because it allows me to bring up a different kind of offence that's related to motor vehicle theft. A lot of times, higher-end cars, the luxury vehicles, will be stolen for export. But there is a significant amount of evidence compiled by the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police and the Insurance Bureau of Canada about the issue of stealing a motor vehicle to commit another crime. In this case it would be something like a pickup truck to break into someone's home or a fast car to take someone away from the scene of a crime, whether they're robbing a store or committing an assault or something like that.
What this provision would allow, too, with the tougher penalties but the separate offence, would be that if the police weren't able to catch the thief or might not be able to prove this particular offender went on to commit the break and enter or the vandalism or whatever, if they could get them on the theft of a motor vehicle, that gives them something they can catch them on.
Just further on the point, you could have someone even more dependent on a car worth less than $5,000 than on a car worth over $20,000. In my riding I would be willing to venture that almost half my constituents probably own vehicles worth less than $5,000. You take a minivan used for taking kids to appointments, to school. It might be seven, eight, nine, or ten years old. Those tend to depreciate to the point where, if they were assessed, the family might only get $4,500 from the insurance provider. But they are no less dependent on that vehicle than someone who has a brand-new $25,000 car. I believe the impact on the family is the same.
I would go further to argue that the families who rely on less expensive vehicles probably only have one or two. Families who are able to afford some higher-end ones might have more options: it might not be their family's only vehicle, or they might have extra coverage on their insurance to allow for rental cars. So I would venture to say that the impact of theft of a vehicle that's worth less than $5,000 could be more disruptive than even on some of the higher-end luxury vehicles. Obviously, I don't have hard data to back that up, but I think it's an excellent point.