44th Parl. 1st Sess.
February 6, 2024 10:00AM
- Feb/6/24 10:23:12 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am pleased to see that the Conservatives have finally realized that there is an auto theft crisis in Canada. I for one have been talking about it since October 2023. I moved a motion at the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security to study—
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Madam Speaker, I will start again. Unfortunately, I do not think anyone heard me. If the member would put his earpiece in, I think that would work even better.
I am pleased to see that the Conservatives have finally realized that there is an auto theft crisis in Canada. I for one have been talking about it since October. I moved a motion at the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security to study this issue. The Conservatives agreed to it. They thought it was a good idea, but all they have done since then is hold up the committee's work. That is what they did with Bill C-20 and Bill C-26.
Why are they doing that? The reason is that they do not think that the auto theft crisis is all that important after all.
Why do they want to talk about it today? Is it because it makes for a good campaign slogan? Is it because they want to crack down on crime? Why has this become a priority for the Conservative Party today?
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- Feb/6/24 10:27:03 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, you may not have noticed, but at the beginning of his speech, the member called another colleague in the House by name. I believe we are supposed to call our colleagues by their titles. Perhaps he should be reminded of that.
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- Feb/6/24 11:00:55 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am very pleased to know that my colleague has convened a national summit to take place later this week to address this important topic.
Still, I would really like to know what the government, what the Minister of Public Safety did before that. Auto theft has always existed. However, since 2021 and 2022 it has skyrocketed. Police services themselves have created a special squad, an initiative led by the Montreal police service, or SPVM, with the Longueuil police service, the Sûreté du Québec and the RCMP.
Did the government participate in these efforts? Did it fund these initiatives? What has it done in the past few years to combat this scourge? What does it want to see come out of its summit? I have a specific question. Last week, I heard on the radio that the chief of the SPVM was not invited to this summit. Let us keep in mind that Montreal is a major hub. Has the government rectified the situation?
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Madam Speaker, I am delighted to have the opportunity to elaborate on this subject. As I was saying earlier, the Conservatives are finally paying attention. They now realize that this is an important topic and that it might be a good idea to add it to their arsenal of election slogans.
As my colleague from Saanich—Gulf Islands was saying a little earlier, it is true that investigative journalism brought this problem to our attention a few months ago. There are also organizations that come to Ottawa to tell us about certain issues and raise awareness about them.
Last April, I met with people from the Corporation des concessionnaires automobiles du Québec and the Canadian Automobile Dealers Association and they talked to me about this. It is wrong to say that they do not care about this phenomenon because they make money and they will be able to sell a car if a customer has theirs stolen, since they are reimbursed by the insurance company. It is not true that they do not care, because they are here in Ottawa to talk to us about it. They want the government to do something about this problem.
I first became interested in the subject a few months ago. I met with global car manufacturers, who also spoke to me about it. In October, following the feature story aired in J.E, a television program on TVA, and after the numerous news reports of the Journal de Montréal’s investigations bureau, I announced that I was going to move a motion at the public safety and national security committee. I talked to my colleagues about it, because we often see members of certain parties come totally out of left field with a motion on any given subject, thinking everyone is going to accept it as is. It is important to discuss these things with colleagues first and to make them aware of the issue. That is how I came to talk to my Conservative colleagues about the auto theft problem. They seemed to be very interested. When I moved the motion, all parties voted in favour of it. Everyone had a story to tell, everyone had a friend or colleague who had their vehicle stolen. A Conservative colleague even told me that he personally had his car stolen. There was definitely a consensus that this was something we should look into as soon as possible.
At the public safety and national security committee, we were looking at Bill C-20. That was significantly delayed by the Conservative Party for reasons we may or may not be aware of. The same thing is happening now with Bill C-26. The process has been delayed, and our committee agenda has us looking at the bill on auto theft after that. I do not really understand why the Conservatives are trying to delay this study as much as possible, when they are making it a priority today by talking about it. If it were that important to them, they would be working hard on the public safety and national security committee to finally get it done.
With today’s motion, they may be trying to get material for pre-election, or even election, slogans, because we get the impression that the Conservative Party may already be on the campaign trail. The Bloc Québécois did not get the memo. The Conservatives’ new slogan is in today’s motion, which states, “after eight years of soft on crime policies, this Prime Minister has created the auto theft crisis”. Who knew? The Prime Minister himself created the auto theft crisis. He sure has broad shoulders. I am not saying this to defend him. It is true that the Liberals have not done much in recent years to combat this problem. However, that the Prime Minister single-handedly created the crisis is something we cannot take very seriously.
I would even go so far as to say that the entire argument laid out in the Conservatives’ motion is completely disconnected from reality, despite the fact that the problem is all too real. If one looks at the problem with a minimum of seriousness, it is immediately clear that the COVID 19 pandemic in 2020 caused significant disruptions in the logistics chain around the world. One of the most hard-hit sectors was the industry producing the semiconductors needed for all microprocessors. The microprocessor shortage led to a worldwide reduction in auto manufacturing, which made demand go up. This increased the cost of used vehicles. Crime gangs jumped on the opportunity and quickly specialized in car theft and shipment to other markets. This was already happening on a smaller scale, but the pandemic and the impact it had on supply chains accelerated the phenomenon. Because of its geographical location, Montreal became an auto theft hub.
Why was that? Because Montreal is home to the largest port in eastern Canada that provides access to the rest of the world. Of course other ports are involved as well, such as those in Halifax and Vancouver. However, these ports have not been as affected as the port of Montreal. It is truly a gateway, a hub. As I was saying, the pandemic exacerbated the situation but, on top of that, new technological developments have made auto theft more appealing.
For example, consider the increasingly frequent use of smart keys, which make it easier to steal vehicles. Several news reports have shown how thieves go about it. All they have to do is use a relay to amplify the signal of a smart key inside a house by standing next to the front door. With an accomplice, the thief can then open the car door and start the engine.
They can also connect a computer to the onboard diagnostic port in the car, which enables them to use another key. All they have to do then is force open the door.
It is child’s play for people who know what they are doing.
In Montreal, as in the rest of the country, we have seen people using Denver boots or steering wheel locks to make it harder for thieves to steal their car. I say harder, because thieves have found other ways to remove these devices and leave with a car in no time at all.
This phenomenon is truly becoming a scourge, especially in Quebec and in Montreal. Auto theft has increased over the years. According to Équité Association, roughly 70,000 vehicles were stolen in Canada in 2022. That is huge. Between 2021 and 2022, the number of thefts increased by 50%, or half, in Quebec, by nearly half in Ontario, or 48%, by 34% in Atlantic Canada, and by 18% in Alberta. 2022 was a record year for auto theft. The numbers are not yet known for 2023, but by all indications auto theft has increased yet again.
The reported losses are in the billions of dollars for insurers, and we have seen premiums go up for ordinary people. Le Journal de Montréal reported that between 2012 and 2022, the average car insurance premium increased by 50% as well. This increase is in part tied to auto theft.
Given these facts, one of the questions we need to ask ourselves is why there is this growing interest in auto theft.
It must be said that auto theft is one of the easiest and least risky sources of revenue for gangs, which then use part of the proceeds to finance other criminal activities, such as gun trafficking and human trafficking. Those are the two reasons. It is easy and low-risk.
I explained earlier why it is easy. One reason it is so low-risk is that sentences are so light. In an article in La Presse, Jacques Lamontagne, director of investigations for Quebec and the Atlantic region at Équité Association and a retired Montreal police force criminal investigator, explained—
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Thank you, Madam Speaker.
I was just saying that this man, Jacques Lamontagne, is a seasoned professional and he said the following:
There are more legal consequences to crossing the border with four kilos of cocaine than with stolen vehicles. Both crimes pay big dividends [to criminal groups and] the criminal underworld. Young thugs run less of a risk if they steal a Jeep Wrangler than if they sell narcotics on the street....There's not much of a deterrent if people know that they'll probably be let off for a first [offence] or, at worst, serve four to six months for car theft compared to a sentence lasting years for selling illicit substances.
I will return to Mr. Lamontagne's use of the term “young thugs”. The phenomenon is fairly widespread. Crime gangs often use young people who often have no criminal record and are sometimes minors. They are asked to steal cars or transport illegal guns because the punishment for first offences is rarely harsh. It is a kind of strategy that these people use. I am not saying that the thieves should not go to prison, but I think that we need to focus primarily on going after these criminal gangs and their leaders.
Where the Conservative Party goes wrong is in assuming that this entire crisis was created by the Prime Minister himself and by lax policies, like Bill C-5, as the Conservatives are claiming.
The motion specifically calls on the government to "immediately reverse changes the Liberal government made in their soft on crime Bill C-5 that allows for car stealing criminals to be on house arrest instead of jail.” Reading the motion, it is clear that the Conservatives are trying to link the increase in auto theft since 2015 to Bill C-5. As my colleague mentioned earlier, Bill C-5 received royal assent at the very end of 2022. I have no idea how the Conservatives came to the conclusion that Bill C-5 is to blame, since auto theft has been increasing since 2015. I do not think there is one simple explanation. The Conservatives are trying to find simple solutions to complicated problems. They say that this Prime Minister has been in office since 2015, so he is responsible for all of society's problems. Again, I am not defending the Prime Minister, but at some point, members have to put forward serious arguments.
Contrary to Conservative claims, Bill C‑5 did not do away with minimum sentences for auto theft. Subsection 333.1(1) of the Criminal Code provides for a minimum sentence of six months in the case of a third offence. The Conservatives may well say that is not enough, but there is one major problem with their assertion. Are they aware that subsection 333.1(1) was added to the Criminal Code by the Conservatives themselves in 2010 via Bill S‑9? If they now find that that is not enough, they have only themselves to blame.
In this motion, the Conservatives also say that Bill C‑5 allowed for conditional sentences for auto theft. These are also known as house arrest, or what the Conservative leader likes to call Netflix sentences. It is true that the Liberals repealed subparagraph 742.1(f)(vii), which prevented conditional sentencing for auto theft. However, the other paragraphs in section 742.1 set out conditions for conditional sentencing: The court must be convinced that there is no risk to society, and the term of imprisonment must be less than two years. The judge may also impose any conditions they deem necessary. In other words, there is nothing preventing a judge from saying no to a conditional sentence. A judge should be able to exercise judgment. The Conservatives are assuming judges are not capable of doing that.
A conditional sentence cannot be imposed for a sentence of two years or more, so it is not an option in the most serious cases, because the maximum sentence is actually 10 years.
The Conservatives are also forgetting that there is always a bail hearing to determine whether an offender can be released while awaiting trial. Unless there are aggravating factors, it is rare for a person to remain in jail while awaiting trial for auto theft. In other words, the Conservatives' claim that criminals are being caught and and then immediately released because of Bill C‑5 is unfounded, because that was happening long before Bill C‑5 came into force.
Once again, it is up to the judge to decide whether an offender should be kept in jail while awaiting trial and what conditions the offender must meet, especially since, as I mentioned earlier, criminals often use minors because they are handed lesser sentences.
I agree with the Conservatives about one thing in every case. Part of the problem is that Ottawa has done absolutely nothing to control auto theft. Under the current conditions, even life in prison will not act as a deterrent, because the federal government is doing absolutely nothing to monitor the port of Montreal, where criminals can easily ship stolen vehicles overseas. I will come back to that later.
However, I want to close by talking about the second part of the Conservative motion, which seeks to “strengthen Criminal Code provisions to ensure repeat car stealing criminals remain in jail”.
Once again, it was the Conservatives who created a specific offence for auto theft, with their Bill S‑9 and section 333.1 in 2010. If they believe that sentences are not long enough, they have only themselves to blame.
The Conservative leader proposed that a third offence be punishable by three years in prison instead of the six months set out in the Criminal Code. The current six-month sentence in the Criminal Code was a Conservative initiative. What the Conservative Party is proposing today are changes to measures it put in place when it was in power.
The Conservative leader is also talking about eliminating house arrest, or conditional sentences, for thieves. As I said, a sentence of two years or more already cannot be served at home. That said, Bill C-5 did allow judges to impose house arrest if they deemed it appropriate, but not automatically, as the Conservatives like to claim. However, the bill did not make any changes to release pending trial.
Let us make one thing clear: The Bloc Québécois is entirely open to revising the Criminal Code to deal with auto theft. That is what the Montreal police department wants as well. This time, they believe that new sections should be added concerning the export of stolen vehicles and that there should be stricter penalties for ring leaders. I think that might be a good solution. I imagine that will come out in the discussions at the national summit on Thursday.
The last proposal in the Conservative motion concerns the Canada Border Services Agency, or CBSA, and the export of stolen vehicles. It asks that the CBSA be provided with the resources it needs to prevent auto theft in Canada. I could not agree more with this proposal.
I spoke about this a few months ago. I think that the CBSA, which is under federal jurisdiction, needs to do more. Some people say that it does not have the resources it needs to do more right now, that it is short on labour and funds. They need to figure out what the problem is. Clearly, the CBSA is not doing enough right now.
I spoke about auto theft and how thieves steal vehicles; that is the first step. The second step is exporting the vehicles. Like auto theft, shipping the vehicles out of the country is practically risk free. Clearly, for criminal gangs, it means higher costs and more organization, but it seems to be going well when you look at what is happening at the port of Montreal. That is because it is a sieve.
Around 700,000 containers leave the port of Montreal every year. According to the Customs and Immigration Union, only 1% of all containers are searched. According to the Montreal Port Authority, or MPA, the law does not allow employees or the port authority to open a container unless a person's life is in danger or there is a serious environmental hazard. According to the port's director of communications, when the containers arrive at the port, it is already too late to do anything. The containers remain sealed unless law enforcement intervenes for a specific reason. They need a warrant to open them, so they need reasonable grounds.
Police forces have access to the port and can intervene. However, they do not patrol there because the MPA already has its own security guards. The MPA does not intervene because the police can do it and the police do not intervene because the MPA has its own security guards, so that is just great.
As for customs, the CBSA is responsible for controlling goods for export. CBSA agents can open containers. However, in October, we learned from the Journal de Montréal that there are only five border agents to inspect the containers in Montreal, which makes the task practically impossible. Yes, the CBSA is responsible for overseeing exports, but its mandate is more focused on imports. It also needs to look at what is coming into the country. That is understandable. Do changes need to be made to the CBSA's mandate to ensure that exports are better monitored? I think that is something we need to think about.
Another reason why it is easy to export stolen cars is that anyone can rent a container by filling out a simple online declaration form for the shipping company. We could do it without any problem, just as a small business could. Anyone can change their form up to 48 hours after shipping, so that obviously makes it possible for thieves to cover their tracks once the goods are already on their way to Europe, the Middle East or Africa.
Finally, criminals use numbered companies to fill out those forms. They often use the same or similar serial numbers to defraud the CBSA on their export declaration form.
It should be easy for the Canada Border Services Agency to spot, easy to see that a vehicle serial number comes up repeatedly. At least, Le Journal de Montréal was able to do just that and identify the issue using a simple Excel document. However, for some unknown reason, it seems too difficult for the CBSA.
As early as the fall of 2015, an Auditor General's report stated that export control at the border is ineffective and that only one in five high-risk containers was inspected. Now, we are being told that there are almost no inspections and that, even when there is a concern that there may be high-risk contents, only one container in five is searched and checked. It is easy to understand why there are a huge number of stolen vehicles passing through the port of Montreal without anyone noticing.
I asked the customs union to come testify before the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security on Bill C‑21. The union told us that a lot of illegal or stolen material is shipped in containers that travel in and out of Canada not only by water, but also by train, and that the agency performs almost no inspections. At the time, the government dismissed the criticism out of hand, saying that it did not consider this information important.
What Le Journal de Montréal's investigative bureau reported, in a nutshell, is that only five officers at the Port of Montreal conduct searches. They rely on a temperamental cargo scanner that is constantly breaking down. The agency refuses to second an investigator to a special stolen vehicle export squad. The same serial numbers come up again and again. Critical information is not being forwarded to port services or police in a timely manner, and the agency apparently omits to report high-risk containers to its partners.
We see that many organizations are involved, but, despite that, nothing is getting done.
I would be very pleased to answer my colleagues' questions and I hope the summit being held next week will contribute to finding solutions to address this scourge.
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- Feb/6/24 11:30:18 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, one thing I really like about the Conservative motion is that it says we need to provide the Canada Border Services Agency with the resources it needs to operate. Something in the earlier discussions caught my attention. Liberal Party members said the Conservatives cut CBSA's budget when they were in power.
Why is there one single officer stationed at the Port of Montreal to conduct searches? Is it because of the Conservatives' budget cuts, I wonder?
Anyway, today they have changed their minds and they want to do more, but maybe they should not blame one government for this whole crisis when the previous government essentially did nothing or actually helped worsen the crisis.
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- Feb/6/24 11:31:52 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am concerned, and I do not think I am the only one. Most of my colleagues and the people in our ridings are concerned to see the Conservatives proposing such simple solutions to problems that are always a bit more complex. We need to take the time to analyze the situation. As my colleague said so well earlier, the argument behind the Conservatives' motion lacks intellectual rigour.
Auto theft is obviously a big problem, and we want to do more to stop it. The Bloc Québécois has been talking about it for months and has been asking the government to do more. It is baffling that the police themselves have joined forces to do more, which in itself is a good thing, but that the federal government, which is responsible for the Canada Border Services Agency and the country's ports, is doing absolutely nothing.
We need to examine the issue properly. There is going to be a summit, and that is good. As I was telling the minister earlier, I hope that the chiefs of Canada's major police forces will be invited, especially the Montreal police chief, because their organizations are already getting results when it comes to tracking down stolen vehicles.
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- Feb/6/24 11:34:18 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, that is an interesting question. If we had been able to study the subject at the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security, I think that my colleague from the NDP would have had a chance to tell me about that proposal.
For months now, however, the Conservatives have been holding up our work so that we cannot get to it. I invited officials from the Port of Montreal. I invited police chiefs from the Montreal police force, the Sûreté du Québec and the RCMP to come talk to us about the situation and explain what they are doing. What should be restored at the ports? Why is there not enough surveillance?
All of these questions are important, but the Conservatives refuse to let us discuss them. If not for their stalling tactics, we would already be having these discussions at the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security. It is unfortunate that they tell the media that they want to be tough on crime and stop auto theft but that, when it comes time to get to work here in the House of Commons, they balk.
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- Feb/6/24 11:35:54 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, what I can say is that some housecleaning is definitely in order at the Canada Border Services Agency.
The Customs and Immigration Union has appeared before us a number of times and in a number of fora to underscore things that are happening that maybe should not be happening. Mr. Sabourin was recently in the gallery when the bill introduced by my colleague from Mirabel to protect whistle-blowers was passed. He had taken a stand and complained about what was going on at the Canada Border Services Agency, but no one believed him until a few months ago. While this may not be today's topic, I think it is important that we review what is going on at the Canada Border Services Agency, simply so that the people he mentioned are treated well.
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- Feb/6/24 11:37:35 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, one of my Conservative colleagues was honest enough to tell me how he felt about this. These are tactics.
The Bloc Québécois is an opposition party. As everyone knows, the Bloc Québécois will never come to power in Ottawa. We are here to represent the interests of Quebeckers. Even though the current government is not our favourite and we do not always agree with it, we try to study and improve each bill as much as possible and make gains for Quebeckers.
My Conservative colleague told me that his party, as the official opposition, would oppose any bill introduced by the Liberal government to stop it from passing.
The Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security is studying Bill C‑26 on cybersecurity, which is extremely important, and the Conservative Party is doing everything it can to delay it. The Conservatives always have an issue or a concern that is more urgent, or a motion to move. They are always filibustering, which is unfortunate. People elected us to do important work here in Ottawa, and we are being prevented from doing it because of these tactics. I want people who may be watching at home to realize this, but it is extremely difficult to get the message across.
In any case, we in the Bloc Québécois continue to do our job, and we are very proud of that.
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Mr. Speaker, I think we all agree that auto theft is a scourge and needs to be addressed.
I would like my colleague to comment on the rhetoric, the reasoning behind today's Conservative motion. They claim that the explosion in auto theft is because of the Liberal government. They say it is because of Bill C‑5, even though that bill did not receive royal assent until late 2022. They also say it is because sentences are too lenient, but these sentences, which were added to the Criminal Code in 2010, were the result of Bill S‑9. That bill was introduced by the Conservative Party, the government at the time. If the penalties are too lenient, the Conservative Party only has itself to blame.
I wonder what exactly my colleague is proposing. We know there will be a national summit this Thursday. There was talk of giving more resources to the Canada Border Services Agency and giving existing police forces the means they need to take action. In his opinion, what more should the government be doing to counter this scourge?
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- Feb/6/24 1:35:56 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I know that my colleague is very familiar with this file. He said that criminal groups are using this money to fund other criminal activities, including terrorism. Earlier I was talking about human trafficking and illegal arms trafficking.
He says that the Conservative Party has a plan for auto theft and that it involves harsher sentences. However, what is his party's plan to go after the heads of these big criminal networks?
Obviously we think of the car thieves, those who commit the crime in the here and now. Often they are people who do not have a criminal record. Some are even minors. We have seen people under 18 committing these crimes in Toronto and bringing the cars to Montreal.
Yes, I think it is important to increase certain sentences, but it is also important to go after the heads of these criminal groups. What is his party's plan for that?
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