Thank you again, Chair.
I want to remind committee members that over the course of the last number of years, our former justice minister had not one, but two government vehicles stolen. In spite of this, we still had no action on auto theft.
It is a problem. It's not just a problem in Toronto, where vehicles are stolen and head to the port of Montreal, or in Montreal, where they go to the port and they end up in other countries. I have been told first-hand about incidents where people have travelled to other countries and seen cars with the licence plates of our provinces on them, with Calgary Flames stickers on the back of the vehicles, or with Ontario and Quebec licence plates, driving around in the Middle East and some places in Africa.
In Alberta, we don't have the numbers that Montreal and Toronto have for auto theft, thankfully, but it's a growing crisis across the country. In Alberta, auto thefts were up 20% from 2021 to 2022. Essentially, one out of every five vehicles in Canada is stolen in Alberta on a per capita basis, so that makes us the second-highest province in the country per capita to have vehicles stolen. Saskatchewan is number one. Manitoba is number three.
What does this really boil down to? We all have to pay insurance. The cost of insurance is climbing exponentially as a result. Everybody pays higher premiums because of these vehicles being stolen. Canada-wide, we are being told that the annual insurance costs of auto thefts have risen to over $1 billion a year. According to the Alberta auto insurance board, the per capita rate of auto theft claims on those insurances that have a comprehensively insured vehicle is 148% higher than the national average. That impacts me and my province directly, but it's not unusual across the country.
Premiums on high-theft models have gone up 25% to 50% over the last two years, with some insurers introducing what they call a high-theft vehicle surcharge of up to $500. Above the premium increases, we have this surcharge on top of it. Why?
I look back to policing days, when auto theft wasn't as prevalent as it is today, but it was certainly becoming a burden and a problem. As I've indicated, some of these vehicles were stolen just for the joyride and some of them were stolen for what we consider to be the traditional chop shops, where the vehicle was taken and sold for parts, or the VINs were changed and auto plates were changed out in order to effect some cash. That's really what it was all about.
This issue has gotten worse and worse. If you track it from 2015 onward, it has become a significant issue, and it's come up 30% to 34% as an increase from 2015 to 2022. That is significant.
Why are we having these issues going on and why are we having so many vehicles stolen? I'll tell you.
From talking to some of those who were involved in crime and some of those who are still involved in crime, and from talking to our police agencies that deal with them when they get caught, there's no deterrent. There's nothing that makes these kids or adults afraid of the justice system. It no longer has the teeth necessary to prevent crime, and that's what some legislation is supposed to do. It's supposed to make it serious enough that those who wish to commit crimes reconsider and say, “It's not worth it.”
The drastic increase, to me, is the direct result of the policies of this government, such as the soft-on-crime approach and the whole catch-and-release policy.
This is just one area where that particular policy is now impacting Canadians on average. Almost everybody drives a car, and almost everybody is going to pay higher premiums for their insurance. If you've ever had your car stolen, it's not a fun process. If it is stolen and recovered.... In these circumstances, most times they aren't recovered in this part of the world because they're easy to get to a port. It does create some challenges with respect to the whole aspect of owning a vehicle. Some people can't afford higher premiums. They can't afford to have a vehicle and then have to get a rental or something while their car is stolen.
I think there are some solutions here. One, we need to ensure that there is an opportunity for law enforcement to work collaboratively with rail and CBSA authorities. We know that our ports are very porous for contraband coming into this country and for stolen goods and contraband leaving this country. It would seem reasonable that we would focus some attention on the ports and on law enforcement.
I read recently of Toronto's great work on a number of arrests made and charges laid on a group of individuals who were in a car theft ring. It's organized crime, and it has become big business, very big business.
I can tell you what the going rate is in different parts of the world for various drugs, but I don't know what the going rate now is for a stolen luxury car. However, it is lucrative enough for people to continue stealing them. We need to be in a position where we take these issues seriously. CN and CP have their own police agencies, and we can work with them.
What I find troubling is the incident that Mr. Brock explained: one Canadian's experience of having his vehicle stolen twice and the frustration that this must cause. It brings the whole justice system from that perspective into disrepute. The more people hear about stuff like that.... It brings it into disrepute. This is because law enforcement leaves the impression—and I appreciate the fact that they are busy with some hot calls most times—that it can't respond in a timely fashion. The frequency with which these types of offences occur also overwhelms the resources that law enforcement has.
This individual did some proactive work by putting a suitcase tracker in a vehicle and monitoring where his vehicle was. I don't know what agencies he tried to contact along the way, but you would think that there would be a willingness to co-operate with each other and have the issue dealt with. The car was in a container, and you would think that it wouldn't be the only car in that container. It would be amazing to see what sort of co-operation can happen.
I think we need to revisit the issues of our justice system and what our courts view as repeat offenders. We had a step in a bill recently, last fall, on improving the bail system. It was a start, but it wasn't as far as we needed to go. We need to ensure that these individuals, if they are caught, don't repeat—and repeat and repeat—their offences before they even get to trial.
As you look across the globe, you have to ask this question: Why is Canada a target for this sort of criminal activity? It's pretty simple. It's because we don't do anything to our criminals.
We've gotten to the point where it's high reward and low risk. Even before, there was that slippery slide of our justice system, where our courts and the laws were such that there was reverse onus on those who committed offences. Criminals would tell you they are not afraid of the justice system. There's no punishment anymore. We can't change behaviour if we don't do anything to reinforce that we have a law and it needs to be followed. Compared to the United States, which has much larger crime rates than we do, our auto theft is substantially higher. Why? It's the catch-and-release program. As I said, it's the high-reward, low-risk environment.
Our border, as we've talked about, is porous. The fact is.... Do we have proper resources in place to deal with the fact that we have so much contraband coming in and then issues with this circumstance of stolen vehicles leaving the country? I mean, if they're being shipped out of the country, there are only a couple of places you need to go—Vancouver and Montreal—for a port. Rarely do they cross land borders. It happens, but it's rare that they do. Dedicated teams to deal with this, like the interdiction teams for drugs, could be done similarly for automobiles. I think that's something that we need to play close attention to. The question may be asked about all these containers needing to have manifests. You can't ship stuff without some sort of tracking device or tracking paperwork. Organized crime submits fraudulent cargo manifests claiming that they ship anything but, and we don't check.
There is the summit, as had been mentioned, coming up in February to address this issue. My question is, why did it take so long to have even a conversation about this particular issue? Why did it take so long to have former justice minister Lametti address it when he had two cars stolen himself, albeit they were not a big deal to him? They weren't really his cars. They were government cars, so we don't get too worked up over somebody else paying the bill on that, I suppose. The insurance industry pays out $1.2 billion, which is covered off by premiums. Insurance companies aren't in the business of losing money, so we are all paying for it.
I wonder what's going to come of this summit. Many years ago, I was at a summit of then minister of public safety Ralph Goodale. It was on gangs and guns. It was somewhere around 2015 or 2016. We talked big, but we didn't really solve a lot of problems at that particular time. It took years to even start getting any action, so I'm wondering what to expect from this. I'm not necessarily optimistic that we're going to have a huge uptake on this. I really hope to be wrong. It's sad when our country has a reputation as a donor country for stolen vehicles. That's really what the industry and other countries think we are. We're a donor country.
When you look at the bigger picture, we all care about the welfare of our communities and about the safety of our communities. I believe everyone on this committee certainly does. We have different approaches to solve it, but we all agree. Why would we not provide significant focus on an industry that is making billions of dollars off stolen vehicles annually? Where does that money go? It's organized crime. It's going to drug trafficking, human trafficking and terrorist financing. Those are the sorts of things that we need to.... We've all been, as government and opposition and party.... We're all on the same page of wanting to deal with those issues.
I would hope that as a group, as a committee that has a responsibility on this and many other issues related to public safety and policing in this country, and borders and CBSA, we would look seriously at this auto theft study and pass this motion.
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.