Justice committee  We've always supported immobilizers. As many know, we were involved in supporting immobilizers, at least in all new cars coming off the assembly line OEM. That has made a difference in helping to reduce the rate of auto theft by 9% between 2006 and 2007. Unfortunately, as I menti

Justice committee  Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for the opportunity to address the committee. The Insurance Bureau of Canada is the national trade association representing Canada's home, car, and business insurers. My name is Rick Dubin, and as vice-president of investigations, I lead and coordinat

Justice committee  Yes, we do. Canadians across this country are finding the leniency in the courts and the lack of a strong deterrent to this type of activity very frustrating, very disappointing. Families who have lost individuals--such as the McEvoy family who recently had somebody killed, and t

Justice committee  Can I add something to that? First, with minimum mandatory sentences, particularly for the serious reoffenders of three or more times, it's pretty tough to steal cars when you're held in custody. Second, just for the sake of information, we investigated and interviewed a profe

Justice committee  The main concern we had was private passenger vehicles, for the purposes of this bill, because when you consider 159,000 vehicles stolen in Canada, the majority of thefts involving organized crime are primarily of the private passenger, light truck type of vehicles. That's where

Justice committee  Right. That's just another area that organized crime gets involved in, but that wasn't the main thrust of what we were supporting in this bill.

Justice committee  I can address that. It is a very large concern that we have here. In York Region alone, where I live, Chief Armand La Barge has his hands full with warm-ups, which lead organized crime to target these high-end vehicles for the clear purpose of stealing them quickly and exportin

Justice committee  We're not aware of organized crime at this point in time beating the standard that's been approved by Transport Canada, particularly with regard to the ULC-S338, which is the national standard of Canada. They added the European standard as another choice that they felt was compar

Justice committee  They modified their standards to meet a few of the attack tests and, when the system engages, to meet the national standard of Canada. So at this point in time, Transport Canada feels they are quite comparable.

Justice committee  That was modified.

Justice committee  We've had a number of projects recently that got right into that. The vehicle could be stolen, let's say, in Ontario, put on rail, sent to either the port of Montreal or Halifax, and exported by container overseas to eastern Europe. They're going to West Africa, to Central Americ

Justice committee  Exactly. The current situation with the Canada Border Services Agency is that they feel they lack the jurisdiction to investigate, identify, and seize stolen vehicles at Canadian ports meant for export, and therefore they do not get involved at this point at Canadian ports to sto

Justice committee  Yes.

Justice committee  First of all, in the United States they have a choice. They can mark parts, where they put the vehicle identification number on different parts of the vehicle. It's only on a limited number of parts. Or they can choose to use some form of theft deterrent system similar to an elec

Justice committee  Basically that's a correct statement. It is extremely difficult to defeat the camera.