Public Safety Committee on April 15th, 2024

[Damien Kurek, Conservative, Battle River—Crowfoot, AB]

That's a great segue into my next question. I'll ask you both to respond, hopefully in about 30 seconds each, because I have one request that I want to leave with you.

In the weeks after Ukraine invaded Russia as.... I'm still involved in my family farm and I had to chuckle when the Russians stole a whole bunch of farm equipment from a Ukrainian farm dealership, but when they got it to Russia, it was all immobilized. The reason I chuckled was that it served them right, and they didn't end up being able to use, in that case, the John Deere farm equipment.

I'm wondering if you could both quickly comment on immobilizers and things like that. How can we get more of that tech so that, whether it's a circumstance like a war or whether it's a vehicle stolen out of someone's driveway, we can make sure that the vehicle is not worth stealing?

Mr. Kingston and then Mr. Volpe, please comment as quickly as you can, because I do have that one last request.

[Brian Kingston]

Very quickly I will say that every vehicle sold in Canada has an immobilizer. That's part of the Transport Canada regulation that is in place. That's a technology that is currently in place, but again, because this is sophisticated organized crime, they invest in ways to get past it.

[Damien Kurek, Conservative, Battle River—Crowfoot, AB]

Mr. Volpe, do you have anything to add?

[Flavio Volpe]

I wouldn't add anything more to that. I think Brian hit the nail on the head.

[Damien Kurek, Conservative, Battle River—Crowfoot, AB]

How do we make sure those immobilizers actually stop the vehicles?

[Flavio Volpe]

Speaking from the point of view of a parts supplier, I will say that you can make the most sophisticated immobilizer. You sell it to a human being. That human being owns that vehicle and maintains and services that vehicle, but it might be three, four, six or eight years out from when you made the immobilizer. Vehicles are different from some of the updates people run on their own phones.

[Damien Kurek, Conservative, Battle River—Crowfoot, AB]

Perhaps I could make this final request. If there are any best practices—and I know you have members who have operations in different countries as well—I would invite you to submit best practices from other like-minded jurisdictions, from Canada's allies, if there are things this committee should take into consideration when we develop a report.

Thank you all.

[The Chair, Liberal, Heath MacDonald]

Thank you, Mr. Kurek

We're moving on now to Mr. McKinnon.

Go ahead, please.

[Ron McKinnon, Liberal, Coquitlam—Port Coquitlam, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to carry on with the discussion of what manufacturers can do to prevent thefts. During the national summit to combat auto theft, we heard about consumer hacking devices.

I'm wondering if each of you could describe those kinds of devices and how they're used.

[Brian Kingston]

Chair, I can start. Thank you.

As was explored and discussed at this summit, there are numerous devices available from very well-known websites that can help replicate key fobs. There's even something as simple as a slim jim to help you break into a vehicle. There are many devices out there.

The government has taken the right step by starting to ban some of them, but I want to be clear that the day after something is banned, a similar device that accomplishes the very same outcome is released and sold in Canada, so it's a very difficult task to stay ahead of all of these third party, aftermarket and, in many instances, illegal devices that are available to thieves.

[Ron McKinnon, Liberal, Coquitlam—Port Coquitlam, BC]

Mr. Volpe, go ahead.

[Flavio Volpe]

I think our only comment on that is that the industry doesn't have a monopoly on capable people who are designing and redesigning tech. We're certainly able to regulate what comes out of our factories and out of our labs, but some of the motivation in the criminal sphere in this space might be that it is more lucrative to work on devices that hack the original coding.

These are sophisticated and, as we said at the national summit, it's important that government and law enforcement be able to take some of these devices off the market or at least make them unavailable through things like Amazon, if you can regulate that. Certainly you can't regulate what people are willing to trade in person in dark corners, but let's try to make it a little harder.

[Ron McKinnon, Liberal, Coquitlam—Port Coquitlam, BC]

I've heard stories of people surreptitiously recording the output of a key fob when somebody uses it and then replaying that back to the vehicle and hacking into it in that way.

Is that a real scenario?

[Flavio Volpe]

I certainly am not the technical last word, but anything that goes out over the airwaves can be intercepted. In some cases, criminal motivations are just as strong as commercial motivations.

[Ron McKinnon, Liberal, Coquitlam—Port Coquitlam, BC]

What I'm thinking of is data encryption and so forth. Secure communication is a byword in electronics these days, in computer technology. I'm wondering if these fobs have one-directional communication with the vehicle or whether there's a bidirectional conversation that can share asymmetrical encryption to lock down the communications in a very robust way.

[Flavio Volpe]

Mr. McKinnon, you sound smarter than me, but I'll say this: Electrified vehicles, especially, are becoming 400- and 800-volt platforms that can platform all kinds of applied technology. The vehicles themselves have more code in them than commercial airliners.

It is the latest and the best technology, including encryption technology, that goes out in vehicles these days. It's just that they get sold. Once they're sold, unless the vehicles are connected over the airwaves with permission from the customer, it's not difficult to see how a two-year-old vehicle or an eight-year-old vehicle might be an easier mark for criminals.

[Ron McKinnon, Liberal, Coquitlam—Port Coquitlam, BC]

Thank you.

I don't remember who spoke of it, but one of you spoke of vehicle locating services. That is of interest to me in terms of potential breaches of privacy.

How do we enable vehicles to be tracked in that way without impinging on personal privacy?

[The Chair, Liberal, Heath MacDonald]

I'm going to have to cut you off there. Hopefully one of your colleagues can pick up on that.

We're going to move now to Ms. Michaud, please.

[Kristina Michaud, Bloc, Avignon—La Mitis—Matane—Matapédia, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I thank the witnesses for being here. It's always appreciated.

The president of Équité Association testified before the committee and told us about theft prevention technologies in use by U.K. automakers. I always find it interesting to compare ourselves to other countries. She told us that automakers are installing software security patches that prevent thieves from taking control of a vehicle's controller area network. These are fairly simple technological solutions that help prevent cars from being stolen. Apparently, U.K. automakers were moved to take action after insurers deemed certain frequently stolen vehicles uninsurable or requiring annual premiums of over £10,000.

Mr. Kingston, have automakers considered this type of approach for Canada? I don't want us waiting for insurance companies to tell us that they're no longer willing to insure a particular kind of vehicle. We're starting to get a pretty good idea of the types and models of vehicles that are most frequently stolen. People even joke that it might be better to have an old car because it's less likely to be stolen. This is an area where technological advances have more cons than pros. Have automakers taken any action to address this?

[Brian Kingston]

I can't speak specifically to the technology you mentioned in the United Kingdom, but I'm happy to look at it to see if that's one of the technologies being implemented by manufacturers here.

Again, I just want to underline one key point. There is no single technology that will eliminate vehicle theft if we continue to have a thriving organized crime market in this country. There will always be investments made into technology to get past vehicle security systems, given that, as we heard at the auto theft summit, these organized crime groups are earning between $40,000 and $80,000 per vehicle that they get out of this country.

I just want to be clear that multiple technology solutions are being applied, but there's no silver bullet here, given the amount of profit that is being earned in this market.

[Kristina Michaud, Bloc, Avignon—La Mitis—Matane—Matapédia, QC]

Thank you very much. I understand. Obviously, if there were a magic solution, we'd know it and we'd already be using it. It does seem to me that a number of things can be done, though.

The Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry was talking about banning certain technological devices, but people quickly responded that this would not solve the problem.

At one time, everyone was buying wallets or metal thingies to prevent people from reading credit cards for fraudulent purposes. When you buy a car, the automaker always gives you a little key chain as a gift. Couldn't people get some kind of device that protects the car's electronic key from being read so it can't be copied? We've heard about the practice of getting very close to someone's house and being able to read the car key hanging in the foyer right through the front door. A lot of little things like that can be done, but I don't know if they're feasible.

There's another example I've talked about here. I have an app I can use to start my car remotely. Sometimes, when I get somewhere, I get a notification on my cell phone that tells me my car is parked in such and such a spot. I know that; I just parked it there myself. Still, I find this kind of geolocation system interesting. Couldn't that be used to send me a notification when the car has just been started if I'm not the one who started it? Are you looking at solutions like that, too?

[Brian Kingston]

These are all the types of technologies that are either investigated or implemented. For something like a key fob, one tool is putting in a Faraday bag as a way to block the signal.

It's important to remember that the key fob was introduced in part to address the rise in the hot-wiring of keyed vehicles. We have been asked why we don't go back to a key. The key system was overcome because thieves realized that there was a way past it. When key fobs were first introduced, they did deter theft, but now people are finding a way past that.

When manufacturers find ways to reduce the ability for someone to capture the signal, what we're now seeing is that they just come right into your house, so we're seeing this rise in carjacking. I think we also have to be careful. If you make a vehicle totally impenetrable and you don't address the theft issue we have in this country, the crime problem, organized crime groups will then come into your house, which is also a very bad outcome here.

Again, I think we have to be careful around the technology. Solutions are out there and constantly being implemented and updated, but if you don't address the crime, it's not going to stop the theft.

[Kristina Michaud, Bloc, Avignon—La Mitis—Matane—Matapédia, QC]

I do think we need to take a comprehensive view of this problem. All stakeholders have a role to play, including police services, the Canada Border Services Agency and automakers. I appreciate that you seem to be working on this issue.

The government hosted the national summit on combatting auto theft, which was a great opportunity to get everybody together at the same table. Have you continued discussing these issues with the government since the summit? Are the Canada Border Services Agency and police services collaborating? Do you feel that you're part of the conversation, or do you feel a bit left out?

[Brian Kingston]

Yes, we do feel like we're playing a part. We were at the national summit. We continue to engage with Public Safety and the CBSA. The manufacturers themselves deal directly with law enforcement agencies, so when thefts have occurred, we have direct communication with law enforcement to try to both track vehicles as well as address vulnerabilities that they raise so, yes, there's constant engagement.

[The Chair, Liberal, Heath MacDonald]

Thank you.

We're moving on to Mr. MacGregor, please.