It's to know the various stages of what happens here. For the local freight forwarders, there are no regulations, and they're not governed by any laws. You can run a freight forwarding business from the basement of your house. You can order up a container, and it could be dropped off in your back yard or in some parking lot or behind your local church. What you'll do is get your cars, put them in the container, close the doors, call up the shipping line or a freight forward or a trucking company to pick up your container, and it will take it to a shipping yard. Next thing you know, it's on the rail up at CN in Brampton and is shipped to Montreal by train or to the port of Halifax. It's then manifested and shipped overseas. Doing all of this is a very simple procedure.
We're seeing that the export of stolen vehicles is growing. A lot are going out, for the most part in Canada, through the ports of Montreal and Halifax. We're seeing a lot of Canadian vehicles also going across U.S. borders, in through New Jersey, all along the east coast of the United States, and being shipped off to the Caribbean.
A couple of years ago I went down to Panama in Central America. I worked with the assistant attorney in charge of auto theft there. He had a huge case of Canadian vehicles hitting his shores in Panama. It was controlled by an eastern European crime group, and they were heavily involved in all kinds of drug activities in those countries, too.
He asked the same question: how are these cars getting through our borders? We're saying they're not being checked by any border agency in Canada prior to the export; that's part of the problem.
It was the same when I was recently in Ghana. The deputy commissioner in charge of CEPS, which is the Customs, Excise and Preventive Service.... I gave a presentation to the national police, with customs and their national security people, and the same thing was brought up: what's Canada doing about the export of stolen vehicles? I said, with customs it's not covered under the Customs Act; therefore, they're not doing the enforcement at the port.
As I say, we are working with the government, working with Minister Day, working with CBSA, and with the RCMP, trying to find ways and means to prevent these vehicles from going out.