I confess to spending an embarrassing amount of time scrolling through my neighbourhood Facebook group. I learn whose cat has gone missing, which hair salon gives a good blowout, and the obscene amounts people are charging to rent out crummy basement apartments. Lately, I’ve noticed a lot of people posting, in shock, the news that their car has just been stolen. They wake up, head outside to drive to work, and their vehicle is nowhere to be found.
Apparently, the residents of my neighbourhood are not an anomaly. In the last two years, the country’s car-theft crisis has graduated from a simmering problem to a full-blown calamity. In 2022 alone, the number of stolen cars nearly doubled in Ontario and Quebec and rose by a third in Alberta. The total annual financial damage? A billion dollars in losses. Life has been especially cruel to owners of Honda CR-Vs, a model that now holds the dubious honour of being the country’s most commonly stolen vehicle.
Michael Rothe, president and CEO of the Canadian Finance and Leasing Association, says a majority of thefts are orchestrated by organized crime rings, who use the profits to finance drug and gun smuggling and human trafficking. Canada is quickly becoming known as a “donor country” for vehicles because, according to Rothe, we make thefts so easy to get away with. In his fascinating Q&A for Maclean’s, Rothe explains how this crisis reached its current crescendo and how Canadians (and their cars) can avoid becoming unwitting targets.
—Sarah Fulford, editor-in-chief
