Public Safety Committee on Feb. 26th, 2024

[Terri O'Brien]

Absolutely. Thank you for the question.

Yes, a small percentage of the vehicles are actually being chopped up for parts. I think the most significant ones are catalytic converters. Catalytic converters have precious metals embedded in them, and when the value of those metals goes up, the catalytic converters become more valuable. We've seen vehicles being stolen to be chopped up for parts, or we've seen just the catalytic converters being cut out of the vehicles. We've seen mass incidents of that, in which thieves have gone into leasing companies or dealerships and have just cut out all the catalytic converters.

I believe it was the Province of Manitoba that implemented a law that has been quite effective there, which we would encourage the other provinces to look at. Really, it involves know-your-vehicle or bill-of-sale documentation. It's sort of like the way a pawn shop works. When you go to sell something at a pawn shop, you have to show ownership. You would have to show some details around the vehicle and how it got chopped up for parts.

That's being applied to the salvage industry, so if somebody drives up with a truck full of catalytic converters, they have to have a bill of sale for each one.

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

I apologize. We have only a short period of time, although I welcome all of you to please feel free to follow up with the committee if you have specific recommendations or further evidence you'd like to submit. Note in those submissions that they can be distributed and made public as well.

I've heard from a host of constituents. In fact, I have in front of me an email from a constituent who talks about a known criminal attempting to steal their truck and having stolen their neighbour's truck in a rural area. They had camera evidence but it wasn't seen to be quite enough. They talked about the whole reign of terror of these known petty thieves who are stealing vehicles.

In your opening statements you talked about the cost this has and how it's not a victimless crime. Not only does it terrify and victimize and, in many cases, traumatize the individuals who have seen significant violations, but it also has a significant impact on the cost of living. Insurance rates are not included in the inflationary index, yet we're seeing significant increases in the cost of insurance, which is of course essential for anybody in our large country. In rural areas, we don't have public transit, so you have to own a vehicle.

I am just wondering if you can share with the committee how we reconcile that there's an incentive to make sure that vehicles are not stolen, and there's an incentive to make sure that these thieves, in many cases on bail.... In some cases, they have stolen a vehicle and been arrested, and the same day they are back out on the streets, stealing more vehicles. I can point to a number of examples.

What's the picture here to make sure we can deal with it so that ultimately Canadians can save on insurance costs? The cost of vehicles over the last couple of years is up 20%. That's a massive cost and a contributor to inflation, which is not tracked in the government's numbers. I'd like to hear your feedback about how we stop this and ensure that, ultimately, Canadians aren't having to pay the price for the host of circumstances leading to massive increases in costs.

[Celyeste Power]

Thank you very much for the great question.

Perhaps I'll start with the cost. It was $1.2 billion last year, and that was in addition to a number of other costs that we've seen increasing across the auto insurance industry. Our vehicles are all becoming much more expensive to repair. The industry did look at ways in which we could mitigate the impact of this on our own, prior of course to the great collaboration we're seeing now.

One way is to incentivize the installation of aftermarket tracking devices so that, when your vehicle is stolen, we can see where it is and we can get it back for you. That, of course, will lead to a reduction in costs. Those can be upwards of $500 to install, and a number of insurers have been waiving that fee or incentivizing folks to do it by not charging the surcharge you may have to pay if you have a high-risk vehicle. Those are some ways we're trying to incentivize.

We're also making sure we get consumer information out to customers at the point of sale, including when to install a bar on your steering wheel. You might want to put your key in a Faraday bag. We've been giving those away as well.

We are very much trying to do what we can on our end to incentivize and limit the impacts of theft.

In terms of what we can do all together, again, it's not going to be just one government and one solution. With respect to the federal government's action plan, we implore you to look at all options available to you, from having stiffer penalties to resourcing prosecution to reprioritizing CBSA towards auto theft and imposing the 72-hour rule. Those things are critical. Provincially we need to examine investing in enforcement teams and look at revinning.

I'll stop there because I see we're at time.

[The Chair, Liberal, Heath MacDonald]

Thank you, Ms. Power.

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

Thank you, Chair. I appreciate the extra time.

[The Chair, Liberal, Heath MacDonald]

We have Mr. McKinnon, please.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair. It's a very interesting study and very important.

From the discussion so far, I get the point that revinning is critical to effectively stealing cars. That to me implies that the people who are stealing cars have to be connected to a larger sophisticated organization.

Would you say that's true? The question is for anybody who wishes to respond.

[Terri O'Brien]

I can respond on revinning. As my colleague Ms. Power said, there are some loopholes in our provincial registration systems across the provinces that allow revinning to happen.

One of those loopholes is requesting RIN histories. What that is is a list of vehicles that includes make, model, colour, details about the vehicle, past owners and the VINs. It's almost like a shopping list. As Mr. Vording said, in the province of Alberta you can see all of the VINs that you could then use to re-register a vehicle in Ontario with what looks like a legitimate VIN number, but it's actually a cloned VIN from another province.

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

Would a petty criminal who's going to steal a car have access to this, or would that be unusual? Would they typically be working through a large criminal organization?

[Terri O'Brien]

Anybody in the public, for a small fee, can purchase a RIN history, but our experience in investigations has shown that these are organized crime rings that are executing these auto theft crimes across provinces.

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

When revinning a car, you have to actually take the window out and take the certificate out. You have to have somebody make that new device to put in there. What does it take to do that?

[Terri O'Brien]

A VIN plate is a very simple piece of metal, but most of the revinning—or cloned VINs or fictitious VINs—is really happening through registration paperwork and through shipping manifests, so they're crimes of paperwork that are allowing stolen vehicles to leave the country or be sold to unsuspecting customers.

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

If someone steals a car and they haven't revinned it, what are their options? Apart from the loopholes we've mentioned in the registration system, are they able to sell it domestically or must they export the vehicle?

[Terri O'Brien]

No, they can affix a new VIN plate and resell it domestically, or they can move province and re-register it in another province and sell it domestically.

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

I'm saying that, absent revinning it, they would have to move provinces.

[Terri O'Brien]

Moving provinces is an effective way to evade detection.

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

Even if they hadn't revinned the car, they could take it to another province and sell it.

[Terri O'Brien]

They could take it to another province and fraudulently re-register it, yes.

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

Okay. If we were to fix the loophole in the system that is exploited by criminals currently for revinning and all the other loopholes in the system—communication between the provinces and so forth—how would that work to stop theft? Would that stop thefts in Canada?

[Terri O'Brien]

No. I would say, as Ms. Power said, we've been working collaboratively with all industries for a whole-of-society approach, as our friends at the IBC have been saying. Stopping the revinning fraud certainly stops the domestic resale of stolen vehicles, but preventing the vehicles from being stolen in the first place with effective software patches or prevention technology such as immobilizers is really critical to stopping the theft—and then stopping the export stems the funding into those illegal trade markets and into organized crime. It is a multi-faceted problem, and really all of these measures need to be taken.

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

I understand that. I'm just trying to focus on one at a time.

[Terri O'Brien]

Okay.

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

Ms. Power, you mentioned that stiffer penalties might be an option. I spent an afternoon one time with a good box of wine talking to a criminal defence lawyer whose major clientele were drug people. He said they just considered whatever the penalty was a cost of doing business. The sweat soldiers would do some time, and they'd move up the ladder and eventually they wouldn't be doing it anymore. They'd have other people doing it.

I'm wondering, since they did not consider penalties to be a major factor in whether or not they did the crime, whether there's any correlation between the stiffness of sentences and the reduction of crime.

[Celyeste Power]

I would say that it should be explored, and I know the government's committed to exploring stiffer penalties under the Criminal Code. However, it's not just that which is going to make the impact, as Ms. O'Brien noted. We need many factors in there. When we're looking at penalties and the Criminal Code, we would suggest that looking at resourcing prosecution is actually a key priority area that could make sure the system works as properly as possible.

It is not the silver bullet, unfortunately. None of these things is the silver bullet.

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

I'm not looking for silver bullets. I understand there are many aspects. When I asked to be given an aspect, that's what I'm interested in.

We don't necessarily know that the stiffness of penalties is a sufficient deterrent. What about the likelihood of being caught? Do you see that as a higher disincentive for stealing vehicles?