Public Safety Committee on Feb. 29th, 2024

[Pierre Brochet]

Thank you for the question.

As I said in my opening remarks, car theft is a crime that has evolved considerably. For example, people who steal vehicles are increasingly violent, and may even go so far as to drive at police officers. They will even attack citizens when citizens locate their vehicles. High‑level organized crime coordinates all these networks. There are more and more cases where young people arrested in stolen vehicles are armed.

In this context, we can only support harsher penalties. Above all, when someone who has just been arrested for stealing a car has to be released within minutes or hours, it sends a very bad message. We've recently seen young people in the news mocking the police, explaining that they had been arrested and released after only a few minutes on a promise to appear. Obviously, when other young thieves see these messages, they tell themselves that there are virtually no consequences to stealing vehicles.

[Doug Shipley, Conservative, Barrie—Springwater—Oro-Medonte, ON]

Thank you for that.

I'll go back to Commissioner Carrique for a question.

Commissioner, we heard this morning in our first hour that there has been a 62% surge in organized crime. This question might be a little bit vague, and I don't mean this glibly, has auto theft increased the amount of organized crime, or is organized crime growing because of auto theft because they are able to fund it better?

[Commr Thomas Carrique]

Organized crime has been a long-going issue for law enforcement. We see criminal organizations adapt to the most profitable criminal markets.

As I mentioned, the global pandemic caused a shortage in supply and an increase in demand. Organized crime is exploiting that, along with being able to defeat technology. Today, it's auto theft. These advanced criminal networks will adapt to whatever criminal market is profitable, which is why we need a whole-of-system approach. We need to lock down and limit the amount of opportunity for them to leverage that and steal automobiles from innocent, ordinary, everyday Canadians.

[Doug Shipley, Conservative, Barrie—Springwater—Oro-Medonte, ON]

I'm almost out of time, Commissioner, so I'll ask you one last quick question.

Could you speak to the prevalence of young people involved in auto theft rings? What challenges does that pose in terms of sentencing and deterrence in this crime?

[Commr Thomas Carrique]

There is a significant level of participation by young offenders, not only in spotting and identifying the vehicles to be stolen but committing the thefts themselves. That puts them at risk. We're seeing that many of them are armed in the greater Toronto area, which puts officers and the public at risk. The penalties are just not a deterrence for these young offenders, who are making a substantial amount of money to engage in this criminal activity. There needs to be greater deterrence.

[The Chair, Liberal, Heath MacDonald]

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Shipley.

We'll move on to Mr. Gaheer, please.

[Iqwinder Gaheer, Liberal, Mississauga—Malton, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you to all of the witnesses for making time for this committee.

My questions are going to be for Mr. Carrique, but I wanted to touch on the comments made by Mr. Shipley regarding the length of sentencing. We know that Liberal Bill C-75 increased the maximum penalty on summary conviction for motor vehicle theft from 18 months to two years less a day. Conservatives voted against that bill. We know there is a mandatory minimum penalty of six months that applies to motor vehicle theft for repeat offenders. We know that people who are convicted of subsequent motor thefts are not eligible for house arrests or conditional sentencing orders, because they're subject to the six-month mandatory minimum penalty.

I want to touch on Mr. Shipley's comments regarding the length of sentencing. There was a New York Times article published in December of last year that I found very interesting. The article was called “Police Departments Nationwide Are Struggling to Solve Crimes”. I'll just quote one line from that. It says:

Sentencing and judicial reform tend to make up the bulk of our policy responses to crime and policing, but this new data suggests that increasing the share of crimes that are solved—especially violent crimes—should be a major focus of policymakers nationwide.

Studies of crime and punishment have shown that a police force’s ability to solve crimes is more effective in deterring crimes than the severity of punishment.

Can I get Mr. Carrique's comments on that quote?

[Commr Thomas Carrique]

It is a whole-of-system approach, as I referred to in my previous answer. We need to be able to solve the crimes, which means we need the appropriate resources and funding for police services to be able to conduct these investigations.

Police services right across this country are doing an absolutely amazing job at tackling auto theft, recovering vehicles and laying charges. You heard some of those successes from the Toronto police and Peel police earlier this week. However, there need to be consequences. When we do make those arrests, there need to be the appropriate penalties. There's an opportunity for everybody here to contribute to improving the safety of Canada.

[Iqwinder Gaheer, Liberal, Mississauga—Malton, ON]

My comment was specifically on the relative weight of the deterrence. Do you agree the deterrence is heavier from the police's ability to solve the crimes versus the severity of the punishment itself?

[Commr Thomas Carrique]

They're equally weighted. If we're unable to solve the crime and lay a charge, there is no consequence. However, if we solve the crime, we lay the charge and there's no substantive penalty, we've wasted our time and effort, and the criminals are empowered to continue with their criminal activities.

[Iqwinder Gaheer, Liberal, Mississauga—Malton, ON]

I said at the beginning, when I listed the penalties that are in place, we already have mandatory minimum penalties.

My next question is for Mr. Brochet. We had Peel police testify here on Monday. I'm from the Peel region. If a car is stolen in Mississauga, and it ends up at the port of Montreal, it has obviously gone through several police jurisdictions.

How has it been working with different jurisdictions? How do interjurisdictional investigations work?

[Pierre Brochet]

Mr. Carrique could also answer that question, as far as putting works in place are concerned.

[Commr Thomas Carrique]

Thank you, Pierre.

I can absolutely speak to this, not only from an Ontario perspective but also from a national one. There is the provincial carjacking joint task force and the provincial auto theft team. We have over 20 municipal police services working collaboratively right across the province. In the GTA, all the GTA services are currently engaged in a task force dealing with carjackings, and we have an ongoing joint force operation with the Sûreté du Québec, the Montreal police and CBSA. There's an extensive amount of collaboration taking place.

The jurisdictional boundaries we may have seen in the past no longer exist, and there's standing collaboration.

[Iqwinder Gaheer, Liberal, Mississauga—Malton, ON]

Great.

Mr. Brochet, in your opening testimony you said you would restructure CBSA. Could you elaborate on that?

[Pierre Brochet]

In fact, the police directors of Quebec believe that the auto theft market must be dealt with. If it remains extremely profitable to steal vehicles and export them, it will be extremely difficult to crack down on it.

In light of this situation, we believe that one of the measures that should be taken is to significantly increase audits of what is going out of Canadian ports. For our part, obviously, we're more familiar with what's going on at the Port of Montreal. This will require changes to the operating structure of the CBSA. From what we understand, the CBSA is much more inclined to check what's coming into the country than what's leaving it. If you agree to go ahead and adopt a measure requiring a minimum percentage of containers to be checked at Canadian ports, for example, I humbly believe that it will require an overhaul of the CBSA. In order to meet the requirements of a new legislative provision of this kind, there will indeed have to be an increase in resources, but that will also potentially involve reviewing the way things are done at the CBSA.

[Iqwinder Gaheer, Liberal, Mississauga—Malton, ON]

It's my understanding that CBSA is already doing a certain level of checking. How would your approach differ from that? Would you just increase the number of containers that are searched?

[Pierre Brochet]

As we understand it, the CBSA verifies 100% of the containers it receives information on. In other words, when it has information that illegal goods could be in a certain container, it checks it. However, there is no systematic check of a certain number of containers leaving the country, or at least that was the case until very recently. That's a problem. That's not a criticism of CBSA; it's just that they do their business that way, based on certain priorities.

We believe that mandating a number of systematic inspections of containers leaving the country and giving the CBSA the ability to carry out this mandate would be a significant step forward in addressing not only car theft, but also illegal product trafficking as a whole.

[The Chair, Liberal, Heath MacDonald]

Thank you, Mr. Brochet.

Thank you, Mr. Gaheer.

Ms. Michaud, go ahead, please.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to the witnesses for being here. It's a pleasure to have you here.

I'm going to continue along the same lines, Mr. Brochet.

First of all, I want to thank you for the recommendations in your opening remarks. So far, I think you're the witness who has given us the most recommendations or solutions to this major issue.

You talked about the prospect of restructuring of the Canada Border Services Agency. I agree that the priority may have always been to check what's coming into the country rather than what's going out. To fix this crisis, this scourge of car theft, perhaps we need to change that way of doing things, at least in part.

You also talked about toughening the law. However, I'm particularly interested in reviewing security at the ports.

You talk about the need to stop organized crime from infiltrating the ports and to review the hiring process at the ports, how they select employees and the security clearance of those employees.

You're a police officer in Laval, so you must be very familiar with the situation at the Port of Montreal. Do you have any information to the effect that organized crime has fully infiltrated and is present at the Port of Montreal, and that's facilitating the export of stolen vehicles? Of course, I'm well aware of the fact that you can't comment on specific investigations. Be that as it may, the Port of Montreal needs a major boost. People don't dare say it, but we all know a little bit about it. According to the port authority, it's doing everything it can, it has security officers, but they can't open the sealed containers. That's part of the work of police officers, who must have a warrant to open them, for example.

What do you think needs to be done at the various Canadian ports, but specifically at the Port of Montreal, where obviously it seems easy to get a container in without anybody knowing what's in it? I'll come back to vehicle identification numbers later.

I'll let you explain to us further what solutions you think could be introduced at the ports.

[Pierre Brochet]

I can tell you what the Association des directeurs de police du Québec thinks about this. The recommendation applies to all Canadian ports, but let's take the Port of Montreal as an example. If thousands of cars can easily be exported overseas from the Port of Montreal, it's not hard to imagine just how many types of illegal trade are going on at the Port of Montreal.

Having said that, we believe we need to look far beyond auto theft. Canada's ports are strategic and critical infrastructure for the country. Illegal products of all kinds, including vehicles, are often exported or imported at Canadian ports. Organized crime has infiltrated Canadian ports many times in the past. Information emerges regularly about the presence of organized crime. Even if we introduce a series of measures, we mustn't forget that aspect. If there are criminals with ties to organized crime in the port, it will be hard to fight auto theft activity as well as other illegal export or import activity.

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

Thank you.

I would now like to come back to a scheme that car thieves appear to use frequently, and that is tampering with the vehicle identification number when filling out the export declaration. The Journal de Montréal investigative reporting team reviewed 74,000 vehicle export declarations from the Port of Montreal between January and mid-September 2023. Of those declarations, 4,125 are linked to VINs of vehicles that have been declared exported more than once. That's 5.5% of all vehicles that left the port. For example, a Volkswagen Touareg was exported five times to Togo according to those declarations. The Journal de Montréal investigation found many other instances of this.

According to the Canada Border Services Agency, its algorithm didn't detect the numbers that kept coming back and was therefore unable to sound the alarm. Sometimes a dot was inserted into the VIN or the number was slightly altered. Using an Excel file, the Journal de Montréal team was able to detect the numbers that kept coming back.

How is the Canada Border Services Agency unable to detect that? If a few tweaks were made to this mechanism, do you think it would make a difference?

Also, should police officers be given a responsibility in this regard? I'm thinking of sharing information with other provinces, especially, but also with the various stakeholders. There's a lot of finger pointing at the Canada Border Services Agency, and rightly so in this case, I think. That said, can police officers also take action with respect to vehicle identification numbers?

[Pierre Brochet]

They certainly can.

That said, there's no silver bullet for solving this problem. I'm not an expert and I don't work for the CBSA, but I assume that the agency is having trouble detecting falsified VINs. Personally, I can understand that.

Law enforcement has VIN falsification experts. Whether we can assist the CBSA or conduct our own investigations, we can do the necessary checks to confirm that a vehicle has been stolen. However, to do that, we need access to the vehicle, we have to locate it and we need the information required to launch an investigation. The expertise is there, but we have to find ways to locate those vehicles in order to conduct the checks. It really needs to be done in partnership.

[The Chair, Liberal, Heath MacDonald]

Thank you.

We'll move to Mr. Julian.

Go ahead, please.

[Peter Julian, NDP, New Westminster—Burnaby, BC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to the witnesses.

I'm going to start with Mr. Brochet.

You made some extremely important recommendations to the committee. For example, you mentioned that port security should be enhanced, that carriers must ensure the content of their cargo matches the manifest and that the CBSA should be made to conduct more inspections. This brings me to the CBSA cutbacks initiated by the Conservatives and continued by the Liberals. That has to change. You also recommended reinforcing legal standards for automakers and ensuring that law enforcement works together by forming federally funded integrated teams. Thank you for those recommendations.

In your opinion, what should the federal budget envelope be if we want to set up these integrated teams to counter the rise in auto theft?

[Pierre Brochet]

Yes, we believe very much in the partnership between the various Canadian police forces. Mr. Carrique talked about it earlier. The Sûreté du Québec and the Ontario Provincial Police are working together very closely on this.

It's hard to say what the funding should be, but it will certainly take a lot of funding.

When situations arise, police services are able to deal with them when there's a will to change things and investments are made. We've seen it before with gun violence in Quebec. When Quebec saw a significant rise in that type of violence, major investments were made and that helped reduce violence and the number of shootings in public places.

It would be hard to give you an exact figure in terms of funding. I think it warrants further study. In any event, it would certainly be a significant investment.