Public Safety Committee on Feb. 29th, 2024

[The Chair, Liberal, Heath MacDonald]

I call this meeting to order.

Welcome to meeting number 97 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security.

Today’s meeting is taking place in a hybrid format pursuant to the Standing Orders. Members are attending in person in the room and remotely using the Zoom application.

I would like to make a few comments for the benefit of witnesses and members.

Please wait until I recognize you by name before speaking. To prevent disruptive audio feedback incidents during our meeting, we kindly ask that all participants keep their earpieces away from the microphone. Audio feedback incidents can seriously injure interpreters and disrupt our proceedings. I remind you that all comments should be addressed through the chair.

Pursuant to the motion adopted on October 23, 2023, the committee resumes its study on the growing problem of car thefts in Canada.

We have today two panels of witnesses. I would like now to welcome our witnesses for the first panel. We have, from the Canadian Automobile Dealers Association, Huw Williams, national spokesperson. From the Canadian Vehicle Exporter's Association, we have Damon Lyons, executive director; and from Global Automakers of Canada, we have David Adams, president.

Up to five minutes will be given for opening remarks, after which we will proceed with the rounds of questions.

I welcome all of you here today. I now invite Mr. Williams to make an opening statement.

Just before you start, Mr. Williams, I have Mr. Shipley.

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

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, witnesses, for being here.

I want to quickly mention to the committee that I want to welcome Damien Kurek, MP, who is now a permanent member of this committee. I was a little remiss in not doing it on Monday. I should have done it, and I want to welcome him to our team here.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Heath MacDonald]

Congratulations.

Mr. Williams, go ahead for five minutes, please.

[Huw Williams, National Spokesperson, Canadian Automobile Dealers Association]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The P.E.I. dealers say hello. I mentioned that I was testifying before your committee today, and they send their greetings.

Good morning.

On behalf of the 3,500 independently owned franchise car dealers across the country, I want to thank this committee. This is not a perfunctory opening thank you. I want to thank you for holding these hearings and advancing the issue of stopping auto theft. Every party around the table has pushed on this issue, and we appreciate it. We appreciated it at the national summit as well.

Ms. O'Connell, we saw you there and appreciated your attendance, and yours as well, Madame Michaud.

I think it sends a really strong signal that all of the parties are together and moving forward. On the way up to testify today, I met with a member from Montreal who is holding a round table on this in their riding in Montreal. The issue is getting attention, but this committee is really important. Why it's important is that auto theft is not a local problem. It's a national and international problem that impacts not just main streets, but every home and every driveway in the country.

Our 160,000 employees and the over four million customers we serve annually are frontline victims of this organized crime. Interpol has made it very clear that this is an international problem and that Canada is a major source country for the export of stolen vehicles. We are literally exporting stolen vehicles across the world from our neighbourhoods, driveways and homes.

Our dealership employees are being carjacked. They're being held at gunpoint. They're being pistol-whipped. They're run over. They're strong-armed out of vehicles on a daily basis. Every single dealership in the country has a detailed security plan and theft protocols to protect their assets and their people, and has gone to the extent of hiring former law enforcement security officials to try to protect their dealership.

If these international crime rings are thwarted at our local stores, they just go and steal factory direct. Days before the auto summit was held here in Ottawa—again, we're appreciative of that initiative—thieves broke into the Oakville Ford plant. They went in and stole 650,000 dollars' worth of vehicles right from the Ford plant. This is organized crime at its best.

Most important, however, our customers are the victims of this crime. There are armed home invasions happening to access keys. They're kicking in doors in the middle of the night. There are armed carjackings in driveways, with kids in the car, to take the keys. They're holding our customers at gunpoint. They're carjacking not just everyday Canadians but NHL stars, sports stars. This is Canada that we're talking about, not Central America. This should not be happening in our country.

Everybody here would be aware of the stats coming out of the auto summit, but they've been well known to the auto sector for a long time: up 300% since 2015 in the greater Toronto area. These are shocking numbers, but the problem is that every police agency knows what's happening and what is costing us a billion dollars a year. The simple formula is this: The cars are being stolen and they're being shipped, towed and sent by rail to the port of Montreal, where the cars are then exported out of the country without CBSA inspection. They're being sent to Africa, eastern Europe and elsewhere, where they're sold by international crime.

The problem is that this is being used to fund guns, drugs, fentanyl and street crime in Canada. That's not our view as the car dealers association. That's what frontline police officers tell us. They all know what's happening. That's what senior police officers tell us, and that's what chiefs of police tell us. It's the pipeline out of the country that's the real problem.

It requires concrete federal action. While funding announcements are appreciated, we need to ensure that action takes place quickly on this, as cars are still being stolen every day and the violent crime that's associated with this is taking place every day. We need a senior official appointed in almost an “auto czar” format to make sure that CBSA and some of the other departments are brought together to do things differently. Doing it the same old way is not going to get it done. In this solution, we need a new way of addressing organized crime.

I'll tell you quickly that CADA has a long history of working on this issue. We advocated when we saw our stolen vehicle rates outstrip the United States in the early 2000s. We advocated loudly for a new bill on this, Bill S-9, which was a specific law passed in 2010 that made it a specific crime to steal an automobile. It also cut down on the trafficking of VIN numbers. It addressed chop shops, and it made it an offence to traffic in stolen vehicle parts.

The most important thing that was passed in 2010 in Bill S-9 gave the Canada Border Services Agency the right to search containers before they left the country. We saw a dramatic drop as that took place. What we're looking forward to is a continued ramp-up of CBSA's activity, in conjunction with that of the RCMP and provincial police forces.

Thank you. I look forward to your questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Heath MacDonald]

Thank you, Mr. Williams.

I now invite Mr. Lyons, please, to make an opening statement.

[Damon Lyons, Executive Director, Canadian Vehicle Exporter's Association]

Good morning, Mr. Chair, esteemed members of the committee and my fellow invited guests.

The Canadian Vehicle Exporter's Association would like to thank you for the invitation to appear today on the critical topic of vehicle theft in Canada. I would like to start with a quote:

Police have put the brakes on auto theft in the Greater Toronto Area and the effect is so dramatic that [the] Toronto police chief and insurance investigators are taking notice.

This quote is one that every person in Canada hopes to see in the media in the very near future. However, this quote was in fact first given nearly 12 years ago in a 2012 article entitled, “How auto theft became a dying criminal art in Toronto”.

The implication from this article is, of course, that prior to 2012 Canada was dealing with a substantial auto theft problem. However, with certain efforts, we were seemingly able to turn the tide in the battle during that time period. This begs the question: What is Canada's history of vehicle theft, what policies and procedures led to such a dramatic reduction in the past, what has led to our recent surge in vehicle theft and how can we apply our past successes to the problems of today?

Where are we today? The most relevant metric to gauge vehicle theft trends is to compare thefts against the actual number of vehicles registered on Canadian roads. In 2022, this theft rate equated to approximately 404 thefts per 100,000 registered vehicles. Where were we in the past? If we go back 22 years to 2001, we saw a theft rate of 931 per 100,000. Auto theft rates today are more than 50% lower than they were 22 years ago.

Please don't get me wrong: This overview is in no way meant to discount the very real problem that exists now. On a daily basis, we see media reports of auto theft recently transitioning from property crime to a crime of violence in the form of break and enters and armed carjackings. Technology in the form of residential cameras allows us to instantly see with our own eyes masked perpetrators standing on our doorsteps at 3 a.m. or brandishing a firearm in the direction of an unsuspecting, terrified victim. The monetary cost is of course staggeringly large, with all estimates agreeing on a value well north of $1 billion in damages.

Rather, this overview is meant to draw attention to our past successes in an attempt to understand the root causes of the issue so that we can develop well-thought-out solutions in today's current fight. In our longer submission to the committee, the CVEA has compiled a number of historical events as a reference on how success can be achieved.

Chief among these is the recent surge in organized crime. A recent report by Criminal Intelligence Service Canada stated that in just one year, between 2022 and 2023, they assessed there was a 62% increase in the number of organized criminal groups operating in the stolen vehicle market. It cannot be a coincidence that this increase in organized crime coincides with the timing of the recent surge in vehicle theft.

This is leaving a stain on Canada's reputation as a trading partner. Interpol now describes Canada as a source nation for stolen vehicles. This should not sit well with any of us. Canada is a nation based on trade. Our reputation on the international stage is paramount to our collective success. In the automotive industry, for well over 40 years, Canada has been known around the world as the most trusted nation to do business with and to source vehicles from for the international market. When organized crime threatens Canadian citizens and businesses, it is incumbent upon the government to root out organized crime so that Canada can regain its rightful place as a leader in trusted international trade.

Last, the CVEA would like to commend the government for committing $28 million to the CBSA in its efforts to modernize its intelligence-gathering systems to root out illicit goods, while ensuring that the flow of regular trade is not unintentionally adversely affected.

Thank you for your time.

The CVEA looks forward to today's discussion and the ongoing work that I'm sure we are all committed to.

[The Chair, Liberal, Heath MacDonald]

Thank you, Mr. Lyons.

Mr. Adams, your opening statement, please.

[David Adams, President, Global Automakers of Canada]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you to the members of the committee for inviting me to appear before you today.

My name is David Adams. I'm the president and CEO of Global Automakers of Canada, which is a national trade association whose members include 15 of the world's most recognized automakers, representing 25 different brands, including Canada's two largest vehicle producers: Toyota and Honda.

I would particularly like to thank MP Michaud for bringing forward the motion to undertake this important study.

It's important to keep in mind that what we're really talking about here is, in fact, organized crime in Canada, with auto theft being one of its most visible symptoms. Given the complex nature of this issue, Global Automakers of Canada has been advocating for this committee to undertake a study of this issue for some time, as well as advocating for a national summit on auto theft to bring together all relevant stakeholders and experts, which we participated in on behalf of our members earlier this month.

When we think back over the last two years and about why this issue has grown so rapidly, it's clear that theft has become increasingly highly lucrative for organized crime groups in this country. Indeed Canada has been, as you have heard, identified by Interpol as a source nation for stolen vehicles.

You're all well aware of the statistics. I won't go into those or repeat them, but the reality is that across Canada one vehicle is stolen every five minutes. In the hardest-hit parts of the country, Ontario and Quebec, we're seeing criminals increasingly resorting to violent crimes like carjackings and home invasions to steal vehicles.

We applaud the Government of Canada's recent announcements of increased funding for law enforcement resources, including for CBSA at Canada's ports; of starting to tackle the availability of car theft tools in Canada; and of the need for better coordination between various law enforcement agencies, both domestically and internationally.

We're seeing first-hand the impact of the $51 million committed by the Ontario government last year to establish a provincial auto theft task force with respect to both busts and recoveries, highlighting that resources, while not the only solution, do make a huge difference.

To support that work, we think the Government of Canada should consider setting up a national task force on auto theft to coordinate these efforts and to help cut through jurisdictional barriers to co-operation.

We also need to ensure that government policies don't undermine our efforts. While automakers are working to make their vehicles ever-more secure, we're also being asked by “right to repair” advocates to make more of our vehicle systems open to third parties. Legislation like Bill C-244, which is currently before the Senate, will make it easier for bad actors to find ways to bypass the technologies that automakers are constantly introducing to make it more difficult to steal vehicles. Collectively, we need to be smart. We need to be coordinated, and we need to be comprehensive.

Canada's automakers have been closely engaged in this issue for years and are ready and willing to co-operate with those who share our desire to mitigate auto theft.

What are we doing about the issue? Automakers are constantly reviewing and updating the security systems in our vehicles but are facing increasing odds against sophisticated, international organized crime rings that have identified Canada as a market opportunity for their crimes. Vehicles with similar security systems in other countries aren't facing the same kinds of challenges to the same degree from auto theft.

We're convening monthly meetings with other key industry trade associations, police authorities and auto theft task forces to share intelligence and map out advocacy initiatives on auto theft to determine how we can better knit together law enforcement with automakers to assist in interdicting vehicles immediately after they have been reported stolen.

We have been developing a website, which will soon be launched, focused on providing awareness on auto theft to consumers and auto theft prevention, and informational assistance to those who have had their vehicles stolen.

We've been meeting with Amazon and other online platforms to discuss the reality that tools and devices with apparently no legitimate purpose other than to facilitate auto theft are readily available on their platforms. Other jurisdictions like the U.K. are already moving to ban such devices.

We've also been encouraging all of our members to meet with police teams when vehicles are recovered to better understand how thieves have compromised vehicles to steal them so that this information can be supplied to global engineering teams.

We don’t have all the answers by any means, and auto theft is a very complex problem for which there are no quick fixes or silver bullets. However, we do believe there are some short-, medium- and longer-term initiatives that could be undertaken to address the auto theft problem plaguing our country right now.

We look forward to working with the committee to identify and implement these solutions.

Thank you very much for your time.

[The Chair, Liberal, Heath MacDonald]

Thank you, all, for your opening remarks.

I will now open the floor for questions.

Mr. Motz, you have six minutes. Go ahead, please.

[Glen Motz, Conservative, Medicine Hat—Cardston—Warner, AB]

Thank you very much, Chair.

I appreciate the witnesses for being here today. Thank you for being part of finding a solution.

As we've heard in your testimony today and in reading about what's going on, solving this problem involves all of industry and all of society. It involves prevention. It involves consumer awareness, justice system changes, police and CBSA involvement, technology and insurance. There are many facets to fixing this, including government policy.

I was interested in your last comments, Mr. Adams. You said you were concerned about government policies that may actually hinder the work being done to prevent car thefts. I know you talked about some of the technology side of it, but does it also include the potential of the current government's softer-on-crime approach? Does that have any impact on the current reality of this situation?

All three of you can weigh in on that.

The Toronto Police Service told us on Monday that 50% of the thieves they catch are repeat offenders, so I would be interested in hearing your thoughts on this.

[David Adams]

If you look at the reality of where auto theft fits in the hierarchy of organized crime activity, my understanding is that it's third on their list now. The two things ahead of it are drugs and other such initiatives, including fentanyl. When you think about the consequences of being charged with drug possession or trafficking in drugs, I would say that maybe we need to look at similar types of provisions with respect to the consequences of being prosecuted for auto theft crimes.

[Glen Motz, Conservative, Medicine Hat—Cardston—Warner, AB]

Mr. Williams, go ahead.

[Huw Williams]

I would say this. We've had literally hundreds of meetings with police agencies. Our dealers are meeting with police in their communities all the time. The number one thing we hear about from our dealers meeting with police and at our own meetings is the revolving-door justice system. People are arrested and they're let out the same day. Police are extremely frustrated with this.

I know you're hearing this from police officials, but I can tell you that this is what frontline officers are frustrated with.

There is also a formula the police are well aware of, and we certainly see it across communities. It's low risk, high reward. These are very valuable assets that are being sold across the world, and thieves are being paid a handsome reward for stealing the vehicles with a low risk of getting caught and a low risk of severe punishment. If you look at that equation, it's definitely one root of the problem, and organized crime is exploiting it.

[Glen Motz, Conservative, Medicine Hat—Cardston—Warner, AB]

Thank you for those comments.

You both mentioned and we heard from our witnesses on Monday as well that carjacking has certainly increased, which is increasing a risk to the owners of these vehicles. It's not just, “I could lose my vehicle”, but “I'm at risk of losing my life or my family or bystanders.” Is that right?

The same thing applies. Unfortunately this government has chosen to reduce some of the penalties for firearms offences. Again, I would presume that your thoughts are similar in those cases where the sentence, if someone is caught and convicted, doesn't match the actual carjacking offences being committed.

[Huw Williams]

I will leave it to the police officials to comment on that, and you'll hear from them, but I can tell you that among frontline officials there is frustration with that revolving-door justice system and the fact that, once they run a case on this, it's very difficult to seize offenders out recommitting.

That cycle is well known to organized crime, and international organized crime is taking advantage of the way Canada operates.

[Glen Motz, Conservative, Medicine Hat—Cardston—Warner, AB]

Right.

There was a comment made the last time we had CBSA and the union here.

You made a comment, Mr. Williams, about CBSA. We can give more money to CBSA. We can ask them to put more officers at the ports. With respect to demand and what's going on at the ports, for example, and by rail, is there a way...? We heard on Monday that there are a lot of vehicles leaving the Toronto area on rail as well, which, we've been told, CBSA doesn't check.

Is it a change of upper management? Is it a change of focus? What's going on? It doesn't seem to translate into actually getting any action at the port.

[Damon Lyons]

Maybe I can address this one. I spent 22 years in the export market as a dealer. With CBSA, since 2020, we've had what's called the CERS portal, where everyone who exports a product has to declare that good.

Since 2005, I believe, the VIN number has been a part of that declaration, but it just came online in 2020. That has to be submitted for every shipment 48 hours prior to the exportation before it can go on a vessel. What we probably need here is an investment in AI. There are vast sums of data that come into that service portal, and it's just not possible for five people—or a hundred people—to go through that data.

I know that FINTRAC recently announced a large investment in AI to go through their massive amounts of data. If CBSA takes part of this $28 million and apply that to intelligence that is targeting those export declarations, they will have an idea of what containers they should be looking at. There are too many containers to open every single one of them, of course, but with their intelligence, we would know who is shipping this product and if that's actually what's inside of that container. It's about gathering all that intelligence to know where we should target our efforts.

[Glen Motz, Conservative, Medicine Hat—Cardston—Warner, AB]

Mr. Lyons, would it be helpful if, much like the United States where they have the 72-hour window in which you have to have your manifest in and it can't be altered...? Would a change of legislation by the government to tighten up the actual documentation of that process be of value in curbing at least a little bit of the auto thefts from our export market?

[Damon Lyons]

We actually already have a system in place now, since 2005. Right now we have a 48-hour rule for anything that leaves by a vessel. Going to 72 hours could certainly help, and I think no legitimate trader would argue against that.

Part of that process in the U.S. is not that they actually look at the vehicle or in a container. They look at a title. You submit a title to U.S. Customs 72 hours before a container can go onto the boat.

[The Chair, Liberal, Heath MacDonald]

Thank you, Mr. Lyons.

Thank you, Mr. Motz. I was being very generous there.

Mr. Schiefke, please, you have six minutes.

[Peter Schiefke, Liberal, Vaudreuil—Soulanges, QC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thanks to our witnesses for being here today. This is an issue of grave concern for my constituents. My neighbour had his car stolen out of his driveway just four days ago, and that I think represents the vast majority of all the cars that are stolen. They're stolen straight out of people's driveways.

When I'm having discussions with my constituents, they're saying, “Is it me or does it seem like cars are easier to steal now than they were before?” I didn't have an answer, so I started to look into it. I started to look at what's going on, not just in Canada but around the world. We see a 59% increase—I don't know if it's news to the Conservatives, who think this is a made-in-Canada problem—in the U.K. year over year in auto theft. The United States has had a 105% increase in car thefts. There's an underlying problem here, regardless of where you are in the world. In developing countries, there are more cars being stolen.

I'll start off my question with you, Mr. Adams. Ford posted $5.1 billion in profits last year. GM posted $19.1 billion in profits last year. Toyota—and I own one, a Toyota RAV4—was at $61 billion. This represents a significant increase in profits year over year. How much of that money is going into ensuring these cars are harder to steal than they were before?

[David Adams]

I certainly can't give you a dollar figure, but what I will say is that automakers are constantly hardening their systems against vehicle theft.

Frankly, I think I resent and our members resent the implication others have made that, “Oh well, there was an immobilizer standard put in place in 2007 in Canada and nothing has been done since then.” That's absolutely false—

[Peter Schiefke, Liberal, Vaudreuil—Soulanges, QC]

I'm not even stating that. I just want to know how much, and if you don't have information—

[David Adams]

I can't give you that information.

[Peter Schiefke, Liberal, Vaudreuil—Soulanges, QC]

Can you get that to the committee, please? Can you furnish that information?