Achi news desk-
As the Greater Toronto Area faces an auto theft crisis, some residents are considering bold — or arguably radical — action.
Kamran Hussain, who moved to Canada from India on an international student visa in 2017 and has completed the arduous process of becoming a permanent resident, said he thought about leaving the country after he woke up on the morning of January 11 to find to nothing but the shattered glass of his car window on his east Toronto driveway.
“I came out and the car was gone,” Hussain said, referring to his 2022 Toyota Highlander.
For the 30-year-old telecommunications worker, the pandemic made the already complicated task of becoming a Canadian permanent resident more difficult, when various bureaucratic steps were backed up. But he said he chose to make a home in Canada because he saw it as safe.
That’s a name he now feels has been questioned by the car theft epidemic.
“I’m looking for options,” he said when asked if he was seriously considering leaving Canada.
“I left my country because of the instability there,” he said. “But now, with the increasing problems that are happening here in terms of security, the robberies, the break-ins and increasing crime, it’s a big concern for me.”
Hussain’s experience of stealing vehicles did not pose a risk to his personal safety. The thieves did not enter his home.
But he said he had been troubled by reports of criminals breaking into homes with weapons and demanding vehicle keys.
The surge in car thefts has led to an increase in home invasions, violent robberies and gun violence across the GTA, according to Toronto police.
The Ontario Provincial Police have described the province’s current rate of car theft as “unprecedented,” fueled in part by the demand for luxury vehicles in foreign markets.
The Équité Association, an anti-crime organization funded by insurance companies, said Ontario for the first time ever surpassed $1 billion in auto theft claims last year.
Amid growing public frustration, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau convened a national auto theft summit in February, urging closer cooperation between law enforcement, border services, the insurance industry and automakers.
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Laura Paquette, another car theft victim, is trying to focus more attention on the role of car companies: in particular, she has been wondering whether car manufacturers can be sued for making cars that she argues are too easy to to steal
At 4 am on January 10, she said she heard her Toyota SUV beep, the familiar sound of it being unlocked.
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“I was in complete shock,” he said in a recent interview. “I woke up my partner and I say, ‘someone is stealing my truck.’ And we ran downstairs and he was gone.”
The 52-year-old social worker described the ordeal that followed as “a nightmare.”
The police found her car, but it needed extensive repairs.
Meanwhile, she was out $2,000 in monthly rental costs for a new vehicle because her insurance was only $1,000. She said she also still makes her $700 monthly payment on the stolen car, as well as $230 a month for insurance.
Reflecting on what she suffered, and how easy it was for thieves to take her vehicle, she called for car manufacturers to face “accountability.”
“If I invested money in a security door for my house, and if everyone with a blank key fob could get into my house, I’d feel cheated, right?” she said. “That’s how I feel about my vehicle.”
Paquette said she is discussing her legal options.
“Why is it on the user to protect ourselves?” she said. “Vehicles are big investments, so why are they so easily stolen? Why do I have to go to extremes to prevent that?”
In the weeks following the national summit on car theft, law enforcement agencies have tried to highlight a series of successes.
Those include a joint operation by the OPP and Canada Border Services Agency that recovered 598 stolen vehicles destined for export at the Port of Montreal, Canada’s gateway to the stolen vehicle market abroad. The vehicles had an estimated value of $35.5 million dollars.
OPP said 75 per cent of the vehicles recovered were stolen in Ontario, where the provincial government announced last month it plans to buy four new police helicopters, at a cost of about $36 million, in part to combat by the car theft crisis.
Toronto police and Bryan Gast, vice-president of investigative services at the Équité Society, have linked the growing problem to organized crime.
Gast noted that car theft rates had been ticking every year before the COVID-19 pandemic, but said the supply chain problems triggered by the associated global shutdown made it harder to find new and used vehicles. hand
“Organized crime is fueling that problem and profiting from it,” he said. “That’s when the numbers have gone up,” he added, noting that the costs of insurance claims related to auto theft in Ontario have risen 319 per cent since 2020.
Toronto Police Staff Supt. Pauline Gray has said that car theft is now one of the top three revenue generators for organized crime groups.
Gast praised the new levels of coordination launched in response to the crisis but said only one metric will ultimately matter in assessing its success.
“The aim will be to stop that upward trend to at least a flat line and then a decline,” he said.
“The success shows in the results: the number of vehicles in Canada that are stolen, that will give us an idea of how well the collaborative plan is working.”
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