As the Greater Toronto Area confronts 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 has thought about leaving the country after he woke up on the morning of Jan. 11 to find nothing but the shattered glass of his car window on his east Toronto driveway.
“I came out and the car was gone,” said Hussain, referring to his 2022 Toyota Highlander.
For the 30-year-old telecom worker, the already complicated task of becoming a Canadian permanent resident had been made harder by the pandemic, when various bureaucratic steps were backed up. But he said he had chosen to make a home in Canada because he saw it as safe.
That’s a reputation he now feels has been cast in doubt by the auto 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 growing issues that are happening here in terms of safety, the thefts, the break-ins and rising crime, it is a big concern for me.”
Hussain’s experience with vehicle theft did not involve a risk to his personal security. The thieves never entered his home.
But he said he has been jarred by reports of criminals breaking into homes with weapons and demanding keys to vehicles.
The surge in auto thefts has led to rises in home invasions, violent robberies and gun violence throughout the GTA, according to Toronto police.
Ontario Provincial Police have described the province’s current rate of car thefts as “unprecedented,” fuelled in part by demand for luxury vehicles in foreign markets.
1:36 “I’m coming for you,” Doug Ford tells carjackers in Ontario, promising to build more jails
The Équité Association, an anti-crime organization funded by insurance companies, has said that for the first time ever Ontario exceeded $1 billion in auto theft claims last year.
Amid mounting public frustration, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau convened a national auto theft summit in February, urging closer collaboration between law enforcement, border services, the insurance industry and automakers.
Laura Paquette, another auto theft victim, is trying to focus more attention on the role of car companies: specifically, she has been wondering if automakers can be sued for making cars that she argues are too easy to steal.
At 4 a.m. on Jan. 10, she said she heard her Toyota SUV beep, the familiar sound of it being unlocked.
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“I was in a total shock,” she said in a recent interview. “I woke up my partner and I’m like, ‘somebody is stealing my truck.’ And we ran downstairs and it was gone.”
The 52-year-old social worker described the ordeal that followed as a “nightmare.”
Police found her car, but it required substantial repairs.
In the meantime, she was out $2,000 in monthly rental costs for a replacement vehicle because her insurance only covered $1,000. She said she was also still making her $700 monthly payment on the stolen car, in addition to $230 per month for insurance.
Reflecting on what she endured, and how seemingly straightforward it was for thieves to take her vehicle, she called for automakers to face “accountability.”
“If I invested money in a security door for my house, and if everybody with a blank key fob could come into my house, I would kind of feel defrauded, right?” she said. “That’s how I feel about my vehicle.”
Paquette said she is discussing her legal options.
“Why is it on the consumer 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?”
0:48 Nearly 600 cars recovered in sweeping auto theft crackdown in Ontario, Quebec: police
In the weeks following the national summit on auto theft, law enforcement agencies have sought to highlight a series of successes.
Those include a joint OPP and Canada Border Services Agency operation that recovered 598 stolen vehicles destined for export at the Port of Montreal, Canada’s gateway to the foreign stolen vehicle market. 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 that it planned to purchase four new police helicopters, at a cost of about $36 million, in part to fight the auto-theft crisis.
Toronto police and Bryan Gast, vice-president of investigative services at the Équité Association, have linked the rising problem to organized crime.
Gast noted that auto theft rates had been ticking up annually prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, but he said the supply chain issues triggered by the associated global shutdown made both new and used vehicles harder to find.
“Organized crime leverage that problem and are profiting from it,” he said. “That’s when the numbers have increased,” he added, noting that insurance claim costs related to auto theft in Ontario have risen by 319 per cent since 2020.
Toronto police Staff Supt. Pauline Gray has said that auto theft is now a top three revenue generator for organized crime groups.
Gast praised the new levels of co-ordination launched in response to the crisis but said that ultimately only one metric will matter in assessing its success.
“The goal 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 being stolen, that’ll give us an indication of how well the collaborative plan is working.”
Nova Scotia RCMP say their investigation into two suspicious deaths earlier this month has concluded that one man died by homicide and the other by suicide.
The bodies of two men, aged 40 and 73, were found in a home in Windsor, N.S., on Sept. 3.
Police say the province’s medical examiner determined the 40-year-old man was killed and the 73-year-old man killed himself.
They say the two men were members of the same family.
No arrests or charges are anticipated, and the names of the deceased will not be released.
RCMP say they will not be releasing any further details out of respect for the family.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024.
For the first time in their history, members of the Cree community of Nemaska received a visit from a sitting Quebec premier on Sunday and were able to share first-hand the story of how they were displaced by a hydroelectric project in the 1970s.
François Legault was greeted in Nemaska by men and women who arrived by canoe to re-enact the founding of their new village in the Eeyou Istchee James Bay region, in northern Quebec, 47 years ago. The community was forced in the early 1970s to move from its original location because members were told it would be flooded as part of the Nottaway-Broadback-Rupert hydro project.
The reservoir was ultimately constructed elsewhere, but by then the members of the village had already left for other places, abandoning their homes and many of their belongings in the process.
George Wapachee, co-author of the book “Going Home,” said community members were “relocated for nothing.”
“We didn’t know what the rights were, or who to turn to,” he said in an interview. “That turned us into refugees and we were forced to abandon the life we knew.”
Nemaska’s story illustrates the challenges Legault’s government faces as it looks to build new dams to meet the province’s power needs, which are anticipated to double by 2050. Legault has promised that any new projects will be developed in partnership with Indigenous people and have “social acceptability,” but experts say that’s easier said than done.
François Bouffard, an associate professor of electrical engineering at McGill University, said the earlier era of hydro projects were developed without any consideration for the Indigenous inhabitants living nearby.
“We live in a much different world now,” he said. “Any kind of hydro development, no matter where in Quebec, will require true consent and partnership from Indigenous communities.” Those groups likely want to be treated as stakeholders, he added.
Securing wider social acceptability for projects that significantly change the landscape — as hydro dams often do — is also “a big ask,” he said. The government, Bouchard added, will likely focus on boosting capacity in its existing dams, or building installations that run off river flow and don’t require flooding large swaths of land to create reservoirs.
Louis Beaumier, executive director of the Trottier Energy Institute at Polytechnique Montreal, said Legault’s visit to Nemaska represents a desire for reconciliation with Indigenous people who were traumatized by the way earlier projects were carried about.
Any new projects will need the consent of local First Nations, Beaumier said, adding that its easier to get their blessing for wind power projects compared to dams, because they’re less destructive to the environment and easier around which to structure a partnership agreement.
Beaumier added that he believes it will be nearly impossible to get the public — Indigenous or not — to agree to “the destruction of a river” for a new dam, noting that in recent decades people have come to recognize rivers as the “unique, irreplaceable riches” that they are.
Legault’s visit to northern Quebec came on Sept. 15, when the community gathers every year to remember the founding of the “New Nemaska,” on the shores of Lake Champion in the heart of the boreal forest, some 1,500 kilometres from Montreal. Nemaska Chief Clarence Jolly said the community invited Legault to a traditional feast on Sunday, and planned to present him with Wapachee’s book and tell him their stories.
The book, published in 2022 along with Susan Marshall, is filled with stories of Nemaska community members. Leaving behind sewing machines and hunting dogs, they were initially sent to two different villages, Wapachee said.
In their new homes, several of them were forced to live in “deplorable conditions,” and some were physically and verbally abused, he said. The new village of Nemaska was only built a few years later, in 1977.
“At this time, families were losing their children to prison-schools,” he said, in reference to the residential school system. “Imagine the burden of losing your community as well.”
Thomas Jolly, a former chief, said he was 15 years old when he was forced to leave his village with all his belongings in a single bag.
Meeting Legault was important “because have to recognize what happened and we have to talk about the repercussions that the relocation had on people,” he said, adding that those effects are still felt today.
Earlier Sunday, Legault was in the Cree community of Eastmain, where he participated in the official renaming of a hydro complex in honour of former premier Bernard Landry. At the event, Legault said he would follow the example of his late predecessor, who oversaw the signing of the historic “Paix des Braves” agreement between the Quebec government and the Cree in 2002.
He said there is “significant potential” in Eeyou Istchee James Bay, both in increasing the capacity of its large dams and in developing wind power projects.
“Obviously, we will do that with the Cree,” he said.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024.
NEMASKA – For the first time in their history, members of the Cree community of Nemaska received a visit from a sitting Quebec premier on Sunday and were able to share first-hand the story of how they were displaced by a hydroelectric project in the 1970s.
François Legault was greeted in Nemaska by men and women who arrived by canoe to re-enact the founding of their new village in the Eeyou Istchee James Bay region, in northern Quebec, 47 years ago. The community was forced in the early 1970s to move from their original location because they were told it would be flooded as part of the Nottaway-Broadback-Rupert hydro project.
The reservoir was ultimately constructed elsewhere, but by then the members of the village had already left for other places, abandoning their homes and many of their belongings in the process.
George Wapachee, co-author of the book “Going Home,” said community members were “relocated for nothing.”
“We didn’t know what the rights were, or who to turn to,” he said in an interview. “That turned us into refugees and we were forced to abandon the life we knew.”
The book, published in 2022 by Wapachee and Susan Marshall, is filled with stories of Cree community members. Leaving behind sewing machines and hunting dogs, they were initially sent to two different villages, 100 and 300 kilometres away, Wapachee said.
In their new homes, several of them were forced to live in “deplorable conditions,” and some were physically and verbally abused, he said. The new village of Nemaska was only built a few years later, in 1977.
“At this time, families were losing their children to prison-schools,” he said, in reference to the residential school system. “Imagine the burden of losing your community as well.”
Legault’s visit came on Sept. 15, when the community gathers every year to remember the founding of the “New Nemaska,” on the shores of Lake Champion in the heart of the boreal forest, some 1,500 kilometres from Montreal. Nemaska Chief Clarence Jolly said the community invited Legault to a traditional feast on Sunday, and planned to present him with Wapachee’s book and tell him their stories.
Thomas Jolly, a former chief, said he was 15 years old when he was forced to leave his village with all his belongings in a single bag.
Meeting Legault was important “because have to recognize what happened and we have to talk about the repercussions that the relocation had on people,” he said, adding that those effects are still felt today.
Earlier Sunday, Legault had been in the Cree community of Eastmain, where he participated in the official renaming of a hydro dam in honour of former premier Bernard Landry.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024.
