Evidence of meeting #33 for Public Safety and National Security in the 45th Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was cbsa.
A video is available from Parliament.
Conservative
Dane Lloyd Conservative Parkland, AB
How does organized crime know what the VINs of these exported vehicles are?
Executive Director, Used Car Dealers Association of Ontario
I would have to speculate on where they get them from. I would imagine that they're probably from unscrupulous exporters that the CBSA is not unaware of. You may have heard last year that they fined one particular exporter almost $40 million for having exported 2,400 vehicles without ever declaring them properly through the system.
There's a person who might, for a few dollars, share a VIN.
Conservative
Dane Lloyd Conservative Parkland, AB
Criminal actors are getting VINs, potentially, from exporters, and then they're using those VINs to clone vehicles in Canada.
Executive Director, Used Car Dealers Association of Ontario
That's correct.
Conservative
Dane Lloyd Conservative Parkland, AB
I raised this issue with Erin O'Gorman from the CBSA. When I'm looking at a vehicle, I can go on the CPIC website and type in the VIN of any vehicle, and it will tell me if it's stolen. That's public information.
Does that contain a list of exported vehicle VINs?
Executive Director, Used Car Dealers Association of Ontario
No. If it did, I wouldn't need to be here today.
Conservative
Dane Lloyd Conservative Parkland, AB
Exactly. When I asked the president of the CBSA why the VINs of exported vehicles were not being made available so that the public or stakeholders such as you could check, I was told there were privacy concerns.
Are there? What are the privacy concerns of sharing those VINs?
Executive Director, Used Car Dealers Association of Ontario
John will probably have something to say, but I will briefly say that I don't believe there's a privacy concern if the questions are, “Was it exported?” and, “Is it stolen?” It's yes or no. We're not asking for the owner. We're not asking for any personal details or addresses.
In our case, in a perfect world, we would be told the vehicle was exported to Germany on this date, and that's all.
Conservative
Dane Lloyd Conservative Parkland, AB
This might sound like a dumb question, but would it be safe to say that if a vehicle's been exported to Germany and somebody's trying to register that vehicle or sell that vehicle to a used car dealer in Brampton, it's likely that it's a stolen vehicle? Is that correct?
Executive Director, Used Car Dealers Association of Ontario
That's correct.
I'll give you a brief anecdote. A fellow who did work for me as a contractor bought a pickup truck from a private seller. He registered it in Ontario, plated it and insured it. About a year and a half after he bought it for several thousand dollars—it's one of these extended cab pickup trucks that contractors desire—it was stolen from him. His insurance coverage was denied. When we ran the VIN through the limited resources we have, we determined that it had, in fact, been exported to Germany in 2021. The VIN on that truck had already been exported, years before he bought it in 2023.
He was able to register it at ServiceOntario because the MTO doesn't have the VINs from the CBSA either.
Conservative
Dane Lloyd Conservative Parkland, AB
A great first step would be for the CBSA to share these exported VINs with the registry agents across Canada.
Executive Director, Used Car Dealers Association of Ontario
From the point of view of being purely altruistic, I don't see any reason it should be a monetization issue.
Conservative
Dane Lloyd Conservative Parkland, AB
Let's get back to that.
CBSA is currently providing exported VIN data. This is Canadians' data. It's being provided to two organizations, Équité and Carfax Canada.
What does Carfax Canada use those vehicles' exported VINs for?
Executive Director, Used Car Dealers Association of Ontario
They will take that data and combine it with a vast array of other data they have.
Carfax sits on massive amounts of data—which is a good thing, by the way. If it weren't for Carfax, it would be a lot more difficult for dealers to do their due diligence. However, the cost of assembling all that data is high.
They make it part of their fraud tool, which you will see if you do a Carfax report. It will say that this vehicle has questions, one of which might be that it was exported, so why are you looking at it now in Ontario?
Conservative
Dane Lloyd Conservative Parkland, AB
Basically, the Government of Canada is enabling a monopoly to exist, because they're providing this information to one company, and this company is then packaging that public information in their vehicle reports that your stakeholders are paying to access.
Executive Director, Used Car Dealers Association of Ontario
That's correct.
In this case, my members would just pass that cost on to consumers.
Conservative
Dane Lloyd Conservative Parkland, AB
What would you say the estimated cost of that is to Canadian consumers?
Executive Director, Used Car Dealers Association of Ontario
Well, we're talking of millions of dollars in this kind of business activity. A Carfax search costs around $46 to $48.
Executive Director, Used Car Dealers Association of Ontario
Yes, that's for each VIN they search.
Conservative
Dane Lloyd Conservative Parkland, AB
Okay.
Mr. Tod, did you have any thoughts on this you wanted to share?
Vice-President, Operations, Eastern Canada, VIN Verification Services Inc.
I agree with what James said regarding access to the VINs that are exported. You can walk through any Costco or any parking lot across Canada and check the VINs. It's open to public display.
The same thing applies to searching for your vehicle. Any of us can go online to the CPIC public site to search a VIN number to determine whether the vehicle is stolen or not.
I'm not so clear on what the issues would be regarding the confidentiality of those VINs.
Conservative
Dane Lloyd Conservative Parkland, AB
Yes.
Did you have any more recommendations? You gave us five very good recommendations.
What I've been told is that sometimes the registry agents aren't even checking the CPIC website to see if a vehicle's stolen. They're just going ahead and registering these vehicles.
Vice-President, Operations, Eastern Canada, VIN Verification Services Inc.
Yes, sir. In some provinces that is correct.
I think that the registry offices lack the analytical capability at the desk. I'll take Ontario, for example. You have 300 and some ServiceOntario desks with multiple counter staff. For the products they're responsible for, from A to Z, there's a lineup out the door usually. They're not trained to be fraud investigators. They're not trained to be auto theft investigators. A good start is to give them the tools at their desks to enable them to identify these potentially stolen vehicles.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Jean-Yves Duclos
Thank you, Mr. Lloyd.
Let's turn to MP Ramsay for six minutes, please.