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?