Mr. Speaker, I much appreciate being with my hon. colleague on the public safety committee on this issue. I found, actually, quite the opposite: oftentimes the people caught with stolen vehicles do have very lengthy criminal records. In fact some of them are even out on bail and are supposed to be on house arrest when they are conducting these crimes. They are repeat offenders.
I do appreciate what the member is talking about. How do we go after the big guys? These criminal organizations are very sophisticated. They use multiple middlemen to prevent the big players from being hit. We obviously have to go after some of the big players, but we also have to remove their frontline soldiers from the streets, which makes it harder for them to recruit new people to come out to commit the crimes.
We also have to stop the vehicles from leaving the ports in the first place. If we make it more difficult, because it is very easy today to get these vehicles out of Canada, it is going to discourage criminals from engaging in this activity. It is going to discourage them from bringing their immense resources to bear on getting vehicles out of Canada. We need to be tough on the border. We need to get the people who are committing the crimes off the street so we can protect our communities.