Stolen Cars in Canada: How Canada Became the Auto Theft Capital of the World

Logan LaFaniere woke up one morning in October 2022 to find his driveway empty.

I miss my new Ram Rebel truck.

Logan’s security camera captures the faces of two men getting into a pickup truck in the middle of the night outside his Milton, Ontario, home and driving off effortlessly.

A few months later, an ad for the same truck appeared on a website listing vehicles for sale in Ghana, some 8,500km across the ocean.

“So I found out I had installed a laptop holder for my son in the cab of my truck and put the Yamaha inside,” Oga Laferniere told the BBC.

“I have no doubt in my mind. I know it’s my car.”

The story of Oga Lafarniere is almost identical to that of Odas.

In 2022, over 105,000 cars will be purchased in Canada, equating to one car being purchased every five minutes.

Among the victims was Canada’s federal Minister of Justice, who crashed twice in his government-issued Toyota Highlander XLE.

Earlier this summer, Interpol named Canada among the top 10 countries for worst auto theft out of 137 countries listed in its International Police Database, a feat that one reporter called “remarkable,” considering Canada only began updating its data with the organization in February.

Authorities say once the cars are stolen, they are used to commit violent crimes, sold to unsuspecting people in Canada or shipped overseas to be resold.

Interpol says it has recovered more than 1,500 cars stolen from Canada around the world since February and is identifying more than 200 cars each week that are being sent to ports, primarily for foreign trade.

Car theft is so serious that the Insurance Bureau of Canada has declared it a “national crisis” and says insurers paid out more than C$1.5 billion (US$1 billion, £860 million) on car theft claims last year.

The issue has forced police jurisdictions across the country to issue public notices on how to protect vehicles from theft.

Meanwhile, while some Canadians do everything they can to prevent car theft, such as installing tracking devices on their cars or hiring private neighborhood watchmen, some don’t take any measures themselves.

Some people who can afford it don’t install retractable anti-burglary bollards on their driveways, like those installed at banks and embassies.

Nauman Kahn, who lives in Mississauga, a city just outside Toronto, started his bollard installation business after my brother and I were victims of car theft.

Only once, Oga Khan said, thieves had entered his house while his wife and young children were asleep. They said they were looking for the keys to the Mercedes GLE parked outside, but they ran off and we caught them.

After this “traumatic” experience, they sold all of their cars except for their two “modest” family cars.

Oga Khan said through his work he has begun to hear similar stories from Toronto-area residents.

“One of my clients is causing trouble on the street, so I’ve hired a security guard to watch over my house every night so I feel safe.”

“Canada’s motor vehicle crash rates are surprising given its smaller population than the United States, the United Kingdom and other countries with high crime rates,” said Alexis Piquero, director of the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics.

“[Canada] “And we don’t have many port cities like the U.S.,” Piquero added.

The United States, Canada and the UK have seen an increase in car thefts since the COVID-19 pandemic, with the latest data from each country showing that Canada’s theft rate (262.5 per 100,000) is higher than England and Wales (220 per 100,000).

That’s pretty close to the situation in the United States, where there are roughly 300 vehicle thefts per 100,000 people, based on 2022 data.

The recent increase is partly due to a shortage of vehicles caused by the pandemic, as well as increased demand for used and new cars around the world.

And there’s a growing international market for certain vehicle models, making car theft a major source of revenue for organized crime groups, said Elliot Silverstein, director of government relations for the Canadian Automobile Association.

But Oga Silverstein says the way Canadian ports are operated makes them more vulnerable to this type of theft and crime.

“The port system should be more focused on what goes into the port, rather than what happens at the port,” he said, adding that if vehicles were stuffed into port shipping containers, they would be hard to tell apart.

Police were able to recover several stolen vehicles.

In October, Toronto police announced an 11-month investigation that resulted in the seizure of 1,080 vehicles worth approximately C$60 million. More than 550 people were arrested in the case.

And between mid-December and the end of March, border agents and police officers observed about 600 stolen vehicles at the Port of Montreal after inspecting 400 shipping containers.

But this type of operation may be difficult to carry out given the volume of goods passing through the port, experts say.

Approximately 1.7 million containers are expected to pass through the Port of Montreal in 2023 alone.

Port officials are not authorized to inspect containers in most cases, and only border patrol officers can open containers in customs-controlled areas without a warrant.

During the same period, the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) faced chronic staffing shortages, according to a report filed in April by the Canadian Federation of Labour.

Outdated technology is also a problem.

Patrick Brown, mayor of Brampton, Ontario, a city with a high rate of car theft, recently visited the Port of Newark container terminal in New Jersey to compare inspection methods in the United States and Canada.

US authorities told the National Post they were “deploying scanners to measure density and working closely with local law enforcement.”

“This is something we’re not doing for Canada,” he said.

The Canadian government announced in May that it would invest millions of dollars to strengthen the CBSA’s ability to search shipping containers. Police will also get extra funding to combat auto theft in the region.