The federal government recently announced that it’s stepping up the fight against car theft across the country. The problem has tripled in the past few years and we’ve got to start somewhere, but the measures won’t do much to crack down on the main problems: Cars are easier to steal by those who know what they’re doing, and they are easier to sell.
Ottawa said the Criminal Code will be amended to stiffen penalties for stealing vehicles, for using people under the age of 18 to commit the crime, for laundering stolen-car money and for the possession of electronic devices that can be used to break into cars and trucks. Prison sentences could hit 14 years. The government already committed in the recent budget to provide an extra $28-million to boost surveillance at ports where stolen vehicles are leaving the country in shipping containers, mostly for markets in Africa and the Middle East.
Car theft is now a $1.5-billion-a-year industry, according to the Insurance Bureau of Canada, which is three times the number of just three years ago. In the first six months of 2023, almost 35,000 vehicles were stolen. The problem is concentrated in the big-city areas of Toronto and Montreal because it’s mostly the work of larger crime syndicates, where police say street gangs steal the cars and pass them on to well-organized distributors. In Vancouver, the drug trade is still lucrative enough to preoccupy organized crime, but it’s only a matter of time.
As auto thefts rise, all drivers foot the bill
There are no simple solutions, of course, but there are solutions. Carmakers already work hard to keep their vehicles secure, but every year, they also make them more convenient for owners to open and start them. That’s a feature that thieves can exploit. The vast majority of vehicles now use electronic fobs instead of traditional keys, so you can keep the fob in your pocket or purse without having to fumble around to open the door. Some now use electronic cards that you keep alongside your credit cards or that work through your smartphone so the fobs stay at home and never get lost.
But key fobs transmit electronic signals and thieves want to hack into those signals. There are many shadowy devices that thieves can use to copy the signal and create a new key – code grabbers, relay attack units, repeaters to intercept the signal even from a distance – but there are also legitimate devices, like the on-board diagnostic (OBD) programmers that mechanics use to fix your car, which can allow the programming of a new key. How should these be better regulated? The government’s not yet sure, but it’s seeking to find out.
Penalties against the sale or possession of illicit devices will be increased, but that will take a while. Similarly, any changes to the Criminal Code will happen, quite correctly, only after months or years of consultation.
The bigger problem, however, is that stolen vehicles are relatively simple to sell. As long as there’s a market, there’ll be someone trying to supply the demand.
Your stolen car or truck can be given a new Vehicle Identification Number by a thief, using forged documents and a VIN taken from a similar vehicle in another province or American state. Provincial and state registration agencies don’t really talk to each other, so a cursory check of the VIN won’t set off any alarm bells, and the vehicle can be sold to an unsuspecting buyer or even a dealer. This should be the easiest crime to prevent, by creating a central registry for VINs so that existing numbers will show up automatically on any provincial database. CBC recently reported, “multiple police agencies are urging federal and provincial governments to create one.”
This might limit reselling in North America, but these days, many vehicles are shipped straight out of the country, to other markets happy to pay for our cars, where police and officials are not so well-organized or well-funded as in Canada. Your stolen car could be put into a shipping container – one of the 1.7 million containers that move through the Port of Montreal every year – and then it’s as good as gone.
Even if you have a tracker in your vehicle and know it’s at the port, police need a time-consuming warrant to open the container. The only people who can open a container for inspection without a warrant are border guards with the Canada Border Services Agency, and union president Mark Weber told a parliamentary committee recently that there were only eight border guards working at the Port of Montreal. This is a facility that covers 30 kilometres along the St. Lawrence River, and where the guards are more concerned with illegal imports than exports.
Last year, 1,200 stolen vehicles were recovered from containers at the Port of Montreal. Meanwhile, up to 2,500 transport trucks arrive every day with containers, and as many as 80 fully loaded trains every week. It’s no wonder that less than 1 per cent of containers are believed to be scanned. And even when they are, the stolen cars may be mixed in with the legitimate cars made here for export. The numbers are overwhelming.
American ports have more scanners and better policing, making them less attractive for illegal shipments. The $28-million from Ottawa won’t go far in employing more people and buying more equipment, but this is where the main problem lies. If a stolen car is simple to sell, thieves are going to do whatever they must to steal it. Better anti-theft technology will only mean more violent crimes, as car jackings and home invasions replace the quiet, middle-of-the-night driveway extractions.
In the meantime, there are a few simple things we can all do to make our cars harder to steal. One is to spend $20 on a Faraday box or bag, which is the equivalent of a tinfoil hat. Keep your key fob inside it and the electronic transmissions can’t escape to be read by illegal code grabbers. Another is to hide a mobile tracker somewhere on the vehicle – thieves often drive a stolen car to a public place to let it cool off for a day or two before moving it on.
The simplest deterrent of all is to spend $50 on a steering-wheel lock, such as The Club. That’s the brightly coloured metal bar that locks the steering wheel, and which can be easily seen through the window. Thieves want to be in your vehicle and gone in less than a minute, and a wheel lock will take a lot longer than that to break. It worked well on your parents’ car decades ago – it’s just as effective for protecting today’s automotive wizardry. Maybe automakers should get back to basics and just include old-fashioned wheel locks with every new car they sell.