Public Safety Committee on April 21st, 2026

[Mathieu Paquet]

Yes. I would even go further. Our study only measured productivity gains related to goods that would go through Valleyfield. However, for the reasons that I mentioned earlier, there could be potential gains for the Port of Montreal to focus on higher-volume goods, and this was excluded from the study.

[Claude DeBellefeuille, Bloc, Beauharnois—Salaberry—Soulanges—Huntingdon, QC]

In your opinion, what impact would opening up services have on regional development?

[Mathieu Paquet]

It would certainly be positive.

I know that my colleague has done a lot of work on that, and so I will defer that question to him.

[Guillaume Chartrand, Senior Consultant, Aviseo Consulting]

Thank you for your question, Mrs. DeBellefeuille.

I think better access to strategic infrastructure would be of great benefit to the various regions studied. Right now, access to clearance infrastructure is limited to one region along the St. Lawrence—Great Lakes corridor.

Moving points of service closer to production would make supplies more affordable for our producers. They could also access empty containers, which they can then load for export in a more affordable and effective manner. All of these impacts make the regions studied more attractive for direct investment as well as foreign investment. We have the example of the Port of Valleyfield to illustrate that.

General Dynamics plans to invest $700 million and wants to build 14 or 15 buildings to expand production. Its investment would be enhanced by clearance services in a port that specializes in the type of hazardous goods the company wants to import.

[Claude DeBellefeuille, Bloc, Beauharnois—Salaberry—Soulanges—Huntingdon, QC]

I'm glad that you've provided a concrete example, because it's true that the government has invested millions of dollars in General Dynamics. The Port of Valleyfield is an important transport facility for inbound international goods. We also have Glencore Canada, which processes zinc and is right next to the Port of Valleyfield. Those are some examples.

[Guillaume Chartrand]

Indeed.

[Claude DeBellefeuille, Bloc, Beauharnois—Salaberry—Soulanges—Huntingdon, QC]

These examples are self-explanatory, and it's hard to understand this kind of push-back from the Department of Transport or the agency to find ways to clear a few containers a month. It doesn't make any sense. You, on the other hand, have shown there are business opportunities.

[The Chair, Liberal, Jean-Yves Duclos]

I'm sorry, Mrs. DeBellefeuille, but unfortunately, your time is up. That's a great point, but we have to move on to the next person.

Ms. Kirkland has the floor for five minutes.

[Rhonda Kirkland, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

Thank you.

Mr. Paquet and Mr. Chartrand, I appreciate your comments regarding Valleyfield. I don't know if you were here earlier, but I'm part of the Oshawa portion of the Hamilton-Oshawa Port Authority.

According to the Chamber of Marine Commerce's study, “Unlocking the potential of the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence Seaway System”, the port of Hamilton-Oshawa—and for reference, people always just say HOPA—has completed construction of its container terminal aimed at increasing inland capacity. The report states:

What remains is the part-time presence of CBSA officers on-site to conduct container inspections under a sufferance warehouse licence, for which the Port Authority resubmitted its application on May 9, 2025.

We know there will be a great economic impact on the Great Lakes region when this licence is obtained, as you've made clear. According to your study, would the port of Hamilton-Oshawa have the capacity to become a first port of arrival?

[Mathieu Paquet]

That's possible. We'd have to check with the Hamilton-Oshawa Port Authority. I suppose they will conduct a specific study on the issue of marine containers. However, our study focused on its project, which is a rail project.

[Rhonda Kirkland, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

Just for clarity, when we're talking about a $10-million investment in the Hamilton-Oshawa Port Authority, we do not mean an investment in Oshawa. We mean an investment in Hamilton.

Is that correct?

[Guillaume Chartrand]

I believe all investment numbers in the study are in regard to the Hamilton rail terminal, which is a sufferance warehouse.

[Rhonda Kirkland, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

Okay. I just wanted to clarify that, because we so often hear about HOPA, but it really should be called the “HPA”, because Oshawa often gets left out of it. Thank you so much. I appreciate that.

I'm going to move to either Mr. Tod or Mr. Hamilton.

Mr. Hamilton, how often are you seeing cases where stolen vehicles are being revinned or cloned and then resold in the marketplace? You may have mentioned this in your intro, but remind us. What are our numbers looking like?

[James Hamilton]

I don't have the actual numbers on that. That's something law enforcement would probably be better placed to answer. Of course, different jurisdictions have different instances. Peel continues to be a hot area, covering Brampton and areas like that. Durham and Oshawa also have pretty high instances.

Again, from my own experience and having spoken to many people in law enforcement, it's not an uncommon thing. It's becoming more of a problem.

[Rhonda Kirkland, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

Thank you.

I actually have a follow-up meeting on this with the Durham Regional Police Service and the port. I will be talking more in depth, locally.

A dealer unknowingly buys a cloned vehicle. Help me understand what happens next in that transaction. Who absorbs the loss? What are we looking at, for the average person?

[James Hamilton]

If we're talking about a well-done recloned vehicle.... That's something organized crime has done well enough to get past the process of.... They fool the dealer into buying it. They fool the consumer into buying it from the dealer. You could be looking at a year, or years, after that transaction before it's identified as a stolen vehicle. By then, the bad guy is gone with the wind, long gone. Most of the time, you don't know who that party was anyway, because they used false identities and things like that.

The loss will be visited on the consumer in the first instance. Then it's on the insurance company that underwrites the vehicle, because the police are going to seize that vehicle and return it to the insurance company, which pays out to the customer for the loss.

[Rhonda Kirkland, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

Would you say that this issue is having an impact on insurance costs or claims for individuals? I think I know the answer to that, but it's just for the study's sake.

[James Hamilton]

I think I can guess what the answer would be. If Équité were asked that question, they would say that $1 billion in auto theft claims alone in 2025 means someone is paying that bill. It's not going to be the insurance companies. It's ultimately passed on to the consumer.

[Rhonda Kirkland, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

Thank you.

You and Mr. Tod have both made it very clear that the current approach of being reactive versus preventive is a real problem. I did not realize that CBSA does not provide the exported VINs to dealers, let alone to the MTO. That was a shock to me.

There was a recent case involving a ServiceOntario employee—I don't know if you're aware of it—who used their position to facilitate fraudulent vehicle registrations. This highlights insider access to registration systems.

How significant is the risk posed by individuals with legitimate system access?

I am happy to hear from either one of you.

[John Tod]

It's a great question.

It's a significant risk. The more you can take ambiguity and discretion away from the service desk, in whatever province.... Have access to the correct information at that desk. Those vehicles need to be flagged at that point in time. It's not a complex formula to put together. They just need the tools. However, you still come back to the same point. Those vehicles can be identified only through a physical examination.

If I may, I'll take a couple of seconds of your time to go back to your first question.

The reality is that I don't think anybody knows how many vehicles are going through the ports. Outside of a stolen vehicle being used to commit another crime, the three main destinations are the ports, the registries and the parts market. Building a deterrent in at the ports, at the registry desks and in the parts market would help offset those costs—the enforcement resources spent trying to resolve that. What we're saying is that it's about having a built-in deterrent.

[The Chair, Liberal, Jean-Yves Duclos]

Thank you, honourable member.

[Rhonda Kirkland, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

That went very fast.

[The Chair, Liberal, Jean-Yves Duclos]

Ms. Acan, you have the floor for five minutes.

[Sima Acan, Liberal, Oakville West, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

All my good questions were asked by Madame DeBellefeuille, unfortunately, so I will move to my revinning questions with Mr. Hamilton.

Mr. Hamilton, auto thefts in Canada dropped by 18% in 2025, nationwide, and it was driven by a national action plan. We will see more positive news on those crimes as well. However, my questions are primarily about the issue of revinning, an issue that is impacting exported vehicles and causing a heavy burden on both consumers and your 5,000 dealership members. In my discussion with the Canadian Finance and Leasing Association, one proactive suggestion was the implementation of a remote VIN plate verification system as a solution to the problem of revinning. The goal is to move from a reactive model to an intelligence-led approach using technology and real-time data sharing, which can be more proactive, as we can imagine.

Could you please share with us how a searchable database for exported VINs might improve system integrity by allowing the dealers to identify the ghost vehicles before they are resold to unsuspecting buyers?

[James Hamilton]

Dealers have, over the years, grown very comfortable with using various pieces of data to try to appraise a vehicle for purchase and for resale. In Ontario, we're a heavily regulated industry, and they are required to do due diligence. They're not unfamiliar with doing searches to see if a vehicle was in an accident, to see if there's a lien on a vehicle or to see who the previous owners were so they can declare it to the ultimate consumer correctly.

This is another data piece, a significant data piece, when we talk about export VINs, for the reasons I've mentioned. It gives them an ability to fairly easily and swiftly determine whether they have a problematic vehicle. If a VIN on the vehicle they're thinking of buying is showing up as having been exported sometime prior, that vehicle technically shouldn't be in front of them, so there's some question that's raised. It's a red flag, and that's something law enforcement should be looking at. They will come to look at the vehicle to determine, through the hidden VINs that are elsewhere on the vehicle that only law enforcement know about, if it is a problematic vehicle.

What we don't want is the harm that we've discussed ultimately at the consumer end, with them having the vehicle seized or having an insurance claim that costs everybody at the end of the day.