Justice committee  I would say that if every judge in this country were willing to take a training session to learn more directly the devastation related to automobile theft in this country, you might have a point. The reality is that our courts are treating this crime largely as a victimless tra

Justice committee  The $600 million is simply the cost of the 159,000 vehicles that were stolen last year times a certain average price for a vehicle. As I said, Canadians are needlessly paying an extra premium in the car insurance they pay in order to account for the fact that we allow 160,000 car

Justice committee  I could add that we work with police forces across Canada in a program that's called “Lock It or Lose It”, which reminds people that unless they lock their vehicles, they are subjecting themselves to the possibility of theft, and they need to prevent that.

Justice committee  No one has the supposed authority. We have been discussing this item vigorously, as you can imagine, with Canada Border Services Agency and with the Minister of Public Security, who I know is doing his best to look into this matter to try to bring some order to it. But it is abso

Justice committee  Thank you very much. I think that is a very, very good question. Politics, as you would know better than I, is partly the art of the possible. You have to be able to start somewhere and attack what is a very large problem that has, frankly, been going on for a long period of tim

Justice committee  The Canadian standards that we at the Insurance Bureau of Canada worked very hard on essentially have a shorter period of time by which you have to somehow get in between the immobilizer and the vehicle in order to compromise the anti-theft system.

Justice committee  Exactly. The European standard has a slightly wider period of time, where it can be possibly potentially compromised, and that's why we pushed for a higher standard in Canada. We think it's the best in the world, and it's preventing the theft of vehicles. There's a lot more work

Justice committee  We do not take that position, and we will not take that position, because in a competitive market the consumer ought to be able to make the final choice as to where they should get coverage and what kind of coverage they should get, and the market should be responsive enough to p

Justice committee  Last year, 159,000 vehicles were stolen in Canada.

Justice committee  About the same number.

Justice committee  They were not all Volvos, but I imagine a number of them were.

Justice committee  Certainly. This is what is very...

Justice committee  Organized crime is behind all the auto theft in Canada. That means that criminals get young people stealing cars. What happens then? The vehicle is taken to a garage somewhere, it is cut into pieces in order to sell parts illegally to other garages, then that vehicle's identifica

Justice committee  First, unfortunately, we have to be careful not to accuse any group. But we can say with complete certainty that major organized crime groups are involved in automobile theft in Canada.

Justice committee  I'm going to let Rick Dubin answer that because Rick is our specialist in auto theft and immobilizer items.