Thank you, Mr. Chair.
We did gather here today to hear from two ministers about what the Liberal government is going to be doing around auto theft. I would point out that part of the Conservatives' “stop the crime” initiative is around auto theft, and our “jail, not bail” idea for repeat offenders will go a long way to alleviating some of the crime problems that we have here in Canada.
Many of the crimes, as I pointed out earlier, are committed by criminals who are out on bail. The reality, in the one case that I was laying out earlier, is that this gentleman stole 15 vehicles over the course of 10 years, though he was in jail for four of those years, and he stole many of those vehicles while out on bail after being arrested for stealing the first one.
Vehicle thefts across the country have been going up dramatically in the last number of years and particularly in the last two years. Year over year, from 2022 to 2023, Ontario was up 50%, Quebec was up 50%, Alberta was up 20% and Atlantic Canada was up 35%. That's just in the one year from 2022 to 2023. That is significant.
Again, I would refer people to the graph. If you were to graph auto theft in this country, you would have seen declining auto theft up to 2015, and since 2015 you would see an increase. In the last couple of years, a dramatic 50% increase year over year has caused that line to go up very steeply.
We've seen the insurance industry come out claiming that vehicle thefts are costing Canadians over $1 billion every year.
I've spoken to many people who have had their vehicles stolen. I was in Toronto not that long ago, and I was talking to a fellow who had his Chevy Suburban stolen. It was a year and a half old, and he still had five years' worth of payments to make on it. He was frustrated by the fact that when he reported it to the police, they said, “Just contact your insurance.” He pointed out that to replace that Suburban, he was out of pocket about 30%. He said that, yes, he got a Suburban three model years newer when he bought a new one, but that new Suburban cost about 30% more than the original Suburban he had. He said he wasn't intending to buy a new Suburban, but there he was out of pocket.
Never mind when the insurance industry says they've lost more than $1 billion due to auto thefts; if the anecdotal story I heard means that the insurance company is out that much money and, on top of that, individuals perhaps have to come up with another 30% in order to replace their vehicles, that means Canadians are out of pocket another $300 million.
That is placing a drain on the economy; all of that value is presumably leaving our country. We heard about people's vehicles being in containers within days and leaving the port of Montreal.
I think I was here at this committee when we had the port authorities here. I think it was the Halifax Port Authority that said it inspects only 0.3% of the containers. Then, when we asked them how many containers they inspect that are leaving the country, they said it was virtually none. The inspections all happen to containers that are coming into the country, not containers that are leaving the country.
I was hoping to hear from the ministers today to see what they've put in place, how that's changing, what they're changing around the ports. We know that they made some significant announcements around this, but announcements don't mean that stuff is actually happening, so I was looking forward to hearing from the ministers about that today.
Nonetheless, the Liberals blocked the testimony of the ministers today, so here we are, not getting the answers we would like to hear from the ministers at this point.
The vehicle theft continues; the costs to Canadians continue, and we look forward to hearing from the ministers at a future date.