Justice Committee on Dec. 6th, 2007

[Ben Jillett]

The export of goods from Canada is a low priority for CBSA. They're looking at the exports from Canada as an import into the other country. They concentrate on imports into Canada, not the exports; less than 1% of the exports from Canada are examined.

CBSA has already told us in our meetings in Ottawa that they're not interested in stolen vehicles, and it's not mandated under the Customs Act. We are working with Minister Stockwell Day and looking at getting CBSA up at the ports and trying to find ways and means of getting vehicles recovered at the ports in Canada.

We have a program through which we're going to all the exporters, shippers, and freight forwarders to try to get them involved in a voluntary program to send in bills of lading and some form of export document so that we can check these vehicles prior to export, but those records are only as good as the person shipping the vehicle out, and we see very few people declaring stolen vehicles in their export documents. They always use false numbers.

[The Chair, Conservative, Art Hanger]

Thank you, Mr. Jillett.

Mr. Masse.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'll continue with Mr. Jillett.

That would seem to me to be where the priority should lie. If you cut that off right there, then there is no sense to even trying to organize to get the vehicles to the ports.

That itself is going to be a complicated measure. What is the normal procedure for those who are caught? Does anybody have any information about how the vehicles are assembled and then shipped to the export point and then overseas?

[Ben Jillett]

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.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Every day 10,000 trucks cross through my border, the Windsor-Detroit corridor, and I can tell you, it's low-hanging fruit. In fact, you can go after trucking companies and also individuals. There must be culpable understanding that some of these products they're shipping are actually rip-offs. What responsibility do they currently have in the process, if they're caught?

Maybe I can ask the police, what's the conviction rate for those getting caught transporting these through this chain? What are the repercussions to companies and individuals participating in it?

[Detective Staff Sergeant Scott Mills]

A lot of them are not getting caught. There is a problem. CBSA are addressing it. There is an understanding that the Customs Act, or the legislation governing their officers, precludes their sharing information with the police. A lot of times we're not notified. I would say the majority of the time we're not notified.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

That can be changed.

I want to quickly switch to another.... My mother had her car stolen. I'm not a lawyer, but I worked with youth at risk for three and a half years of my life. Between the ages of 16 and 30 is what they qualify as “youth”—it's unbelievable—but most were aged 19 or 20. They either had some type of minor problem with the law or were out of school or out of work and were at a critical moment in their life.

The reason I referred to my mother's car is because of what I suspect happened in that situation. Somebody borrowed it. They used a screwdriver on it—a Dodge Shadow, and you just have to put a screwdriver in it—and took it and then left the car at a parking lot somewhere else, with no damage or anything else. It was a very serious problem and also an inconvenience, nonetheless.

At the same time, my understanding of this bill is that this person would receive the same penalty as if somebody actually went into your dealership and were part of a group and cut through the security system and everything else there, or went in and falsified lease agreements and stole one of your vehicles. Is my interpretation of the penalty on this correct?

[Dr. Julian Roberts]

There are additional offences, if the individual is breaking into the dealership. But you're right that it's overly broad, in that it's the theft of the vehicle that provokes the higher penalty, and that, I think, is an issue.

[Huw Williams]

Mr. Masse, I'd just to add to that that there is an element that we've talked of a bit about—Mr. Lee's comment—that this is a complicated issue. One of the most important provisions of the bill is to make auto theft a separate offence and make it identified as a separate offence.

Mr. Mills spoke about making possession of a stolen vehicle an offence as well, and the concept of making it an offence to change vehicle identification numbers. So there's a whole category of offences.

I don't envy the challenge of members of Parliament to figure out how to target that towards the professionals versus the amateurs, because they are different, and we certainly see it at our dealerships.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

To be fair to a private member's bill, you can't expect them to do that, and especially on an issue like this. The question I struggle with is whether or not the punishment system is really balanced in its application on this.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Art Hanger]

Thank you, Mr. Masse.

Mr. Moore, please.

[Rob Moore, Conservative, Fundy Royal, NB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thanks to all the witnesses. It's really interesting testimony.

I particularly note what has been said about the CBSA. I found it interesting, because to anyone who has ever flown, they certainly have the ability to prevent someone from taking shampoo or bottled water on a plane, or anything over, I think, 100 millilitres. So it seems that is something that has to be addressed, the ability to crack down on those things that are being exported.

Mr. Mills, you mentioned the revinning of vehicles. Number one, I commend the person who brought this bill forward, because I think what's been clear is that in its various forms, whether it is the high-level organized crime and things are being exported to the Middle East, or more local action, car theft is a very serious thing. It's something that we have to combat.

I don't want to get into a big debate about sentencing at this point. Mr. Roberts, your point was noted on the deterrent effect. As a member of Parliament, anecdotally I hear from constituents. I hear from people who have been involved with the law when they were younger. The fact that they knew there would be very little penalty when they got caught certainly was an encouragement to stay involved in the life of crime that they were engaged in. So the opposite, in my view, of “deterrent” is “encouragement”, and I think a system where someone knows they're not going to have a penalty is encouraging them to continue in their ways. But your point is noted on that.

To the question on revinning—because that's where I think someone who's an innocent purchaser, who does some of their due diligence, can get caught with something that has been stolen—can you expand a bit on what that means and how that's done, and how prevalent it is?

[Detective Staff Sergeant Scott Mills]

Revinning is basically identity theft for a vehicle. It has become very simplified with the use of the Internet, but it's basically stealing the identity of a legitimate vehicle, which may be in Texas, for example, and applying it to a vehicle that you've stolen. So you take the vehicle identification number from the legitimate vehicle in another jurisdiction and you apply it to the vehicle you've stolen.

So if you have a stolen black Cadillac Escalade, you look on the Internet and find one that fits that description in Texas, for example, and then fraudulently make up the vehicle identification number and other stickers and identifiers and place those on that vehicle. That vehicle, when inspected by a layman or a normal police officer, would pass as a legitimate vehicle. So they're selling these now stolen, illegitimate vehicles to the public as legitimate. Unless it is subjected to an expert examination, it's not discovered.

It's very prevalent. We see innocent third parties all the time who are further victimized because we discover that their vehicle is stolen, and then it is seized from them when they've already paid out.

[Rob Moore, Conservative, Fundy Royal, NB]

That's just another example of how—this came up in our last meeting with the insurance representatives—basically all of us as Canadians are victims of car theft, whether it's in higher insurance premiums, higher cost of vehicles, or our police officers who are diverted to combating this when there are plenty of other things to combat. So we appreciate that it's certainly not a victimless crime.

A few of the witnesses have focused on why there should be a separate offence of vehicle theft. I agree with this. One of the reasons I agree with it is because whether you're driving a 10-year-old, $2,000 car and that's your sole means of transportation, or if you have a brand-new $40,000 car, when that thing is gone, you don't care whether it was over or under $5,000; your car has been stolen and it's a real violation and an impact on your lifestyle.

Is there any other reason it's important to have a separate offence for theft of a vehicle?

[Huw Williams]

From the car dealers perspective, one of the things we've been promoting and certainly trying to build awareness of is that once you identify something as a separate category of offence, you can start to build other tools into the equation that will help to resolve it. I don't think it's an accident that Canada's rate of stolen vehicles is higher than the rate in the United States, in that we don't treat it as a separate offence and you have organized crime taking advantage of the situation as it is set now.

Just to build on one of your other questions about resources, one of the examples we had from the Ottawa market was that organized crime had been involved in a series of stolen vehicle recoveries, as part of a larger operation that had discovered drugs and firearms, but they weren't going to prosecute or go through and track the stolen vehicles because doing so was too resource-intensive. The Ottawa new car dealers therefore came forward and put together funding to allow the administrative portion of that to be done, so that the police could follow up on it.

I think we have to identify the problem and make sure that the resources are targeted, because it's really a cash cow for organized crime.

[Rob Moore, Conservative, Fundy Royal, NB]

Do I have a little more time?

[The Chair, Conservative, Art Hanger]

You have time for one more question.

[Rob Moore, Conservative, Fundy Royal, NB]

Mr. Jillett, you mentioned the repatriation of stolen Canadian vehicles. I know what that sounds like to me. In the last committee meeting, we did hear testimony about a vehicle that was in the Middle East and still had its Quebec plate on it, so is that just what it sounds like?

[Ben Jillett]

I've seen them all. When I was in Africa I saw them with Canadian plates, Quebec plates. I saw them running around with Texas plates, and then they would hang their own national plates on it.

In 1998 I did a peacekeeping mission over in Bosnia with the RCMP. I saw a lot of vehicles from Ontario and Quebec being driven around the country with Canadian plates on them and no questions asked.

There are a lot of rules and regulations that we experience here in North America that do not apply in these parts of the world, especially in West Africa. Vehicle registrations are hard to do. If you talk to any of the Canadian embassy people or the RCMP LOs in these countries, if you give them a VIN number and ask them to check it out to see if it has been registered in Nigeria, the Ivory Coast, or Ghana, they'll say it's nearly impossible. The whole system of registration is not there. So running around with a Canadian plate on a vehicle is quite common. In talking to West African authorities, I've sometimes heard it even becomes a status symbol.

[The Chair, Conservative, Art Hanger]

Thank you, Mr. Moore.

I have one question for you, Mr. Mills. When it comes to organized crime groups, are they using young offenders to steal these vehicles, and if they are, to what degree?

[Detective Staff Sergeant Scott Mills]

Again, I'll have to be specific to Ontario and a recent investigation that we just concluded, Project X5. There's definitely a tiered system in place as far as organization is concerned. There are the thieves who steal the car and receive money, like $1,000 for a high-end sport utility vehicle. A middle man then takes over and sells it—in this instance, to us, to an undercover officer—at the $5,000 level. Then ultimately there are the people who export them. So there is a tiered type of structure from the street to the top. In that instance, our offenders were, again, around 34 years of age.

[The Chair, Conservative, Art Hanger]

Mr. Bagnell.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I thank you all for coming here. This has been very helpful for me as a member of Parliament.

I basically have two conclusions from the general discussion. One is that this is a very serious problem and we have to find ways to solve it. Secondly, unfortunately this bill isn't going to do a lot of that. It may help a little bit, but we already have a crime for theft. Although the witnesses haven't seen a vast majority of the science, those witnesses show that mandatory minimums don't work in some cases and would in fact lead to more car thefts.

As a member of Parliament, and not related to this committee, I would be very interested if you could write me a letter with some of these alternative suggestions. It could be stronger laws for these different tiers, so that we can get those guys on the upper levels for moving serial numbers, possession, transporting. There must be other ways by which we can get at some of these. If we could invest in technology, put federal government money into the technology, that would help.

My question is for you, Mr. Roberts. You said you wouldn't have time to talk about how this offends restraint. I'm not a lawyer, so could you explain what restraint is and how this bill would offend restraint?

And as the second question, if a person stole three cars in one night, would that be three offences and would they then be subject to the mandatory minimum?

[Dr. Julian Roberts]

In regard to your second question, my interpretation of this last clause is yes, because it says “a conviction for another offence under this section that arose out of the same event”. Is “the same event” the same criminal event? I don't know. I didn't draft the legislation. Maybe the draftsman didn't mean that.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

If a bunch of kids got drunk one night and went out and stole three cars to joyride in, in theory they could be in a serious offence with the top 5% of Canadian criminals, murderers, rapists, and all that.