When a Toronto man looked out at his driveway on a holiday Monday last August and saw his SUV was gone — the second one to be stolen that year — he said one thought came to his mind:
“Not again.”
Using Apple AirTags he had hidden in the vehicle, Andrew tracked the 2022 GMC Yukon XL to a nearby rail yard, then to the Port of Montreal, and ultimately to a used car lot in the United Arab Emirates.
After pleading with police to help retrieve the truck, he hired a private investigator and even contacted Interpol, to no avail.
CBC News has agreed to conceal Andrew’s full name and identifying details, as his family fears reprisals for fighting back against the thieves.
Toronto man uses AirTags to track stolen SUV to Dubai
When a Toronto man’s SUV was stolen from his driveway, he used AirTags to watch it travel across three continents before arriving in Dubai. CBC’s Thomas Daigle breaks down what happened and why the man couldn’t get the SUV back even though he knew where it was.
Andrew’s extraordinary efforts provide a rare glimpse into an overseas shipping route used by criminals amid Canada’s auto theft epidemic.
“We’ve done everything we possibly can, save going over there and trying to take it back ourselves,” he said in an interview. “I want my truck back.”
Andrew holds a picture of the bent steering wheel of his SUV, with an anti-theft lock still in place, taken shortly before it was stolen on Aug. 7. (Thomas Daigle/CBC)
Police approached truck, but didn’t retrieve it
After a vacation away from home last summer, Andrew and his wife returned at around 8:30 p.m. on Aug. 7 to an unnerving scene. Parked in the driveway, their SUV’s steering wheel was bent inward — the anti-theft lock still secured — and the driver’s seat was set further back than usual.
The couple recognized the signs that criminals had dropped by and tried to nab their Yukon. They’d had the same model SUV stolen from the same place in May.
They planned to have a quick meal and then block the SUV with their other vehicle, but they never got the chance — by the time they were done eating around 9:15 p.m., Andrew said, the SUV was gone.
After Andrew received his second Yukon earlier that year, he hid two tiny Apple tracking devices in the vehicle to locate it in the event of another theft. Once the SUV disappeared, he said he watched on his smartphone for hours as the AirTags pinged in locations across the Greater Toronto Area.
Andrew said he alerted Toronto police, as well as Peel and York regional forces as the vehicle crossed into those nearby areas. Then, two days after the theft, Andrew said an officer finally moved in.
One of his AirTags pinged from Canadian Pacific Kansas City railway’s (CPKC) terminal in Vaughan, north of Toronto. He phoned York Regional Police and later heard directly from an officer who agreed to take action.
Andrew texted the officer a screenshot showing the precise location of the AirTag. As the officer approached the rail yard, Andrew’s second AirTag started pinging at the same location, suggesting the Bluetooth signal emitted by the device had connected to the officer’s smartphone. (The tracker relies on nearby GPS-enabled devices to determine its location.)
A Toronto man says a York Regional Police officer texted him this picture on Aug. 9, showing shipping containers on a rail car at the Canadian Pacific Kansas City railway’s terminal in Vaughan, Ont. The man’s stolen SUV was “definitely in one of those containers,” the officer texted. (Name withheld)
Andrew received a picture taken from inside a police car, parked near two containers sitting on a railcar. “It’s definitely in one of those containers,” the officer said in a series of text messages viewed by CBC News. But the York officer said they didn’t “have the authority to open the containers.” Instead, they directed Andrew to the railway’s private police service.
Andrew said CPKC police didn’t respond to the scene that night and the train carrying his truck took off soon after. “That’s the pinnacle of the frustration,” Andrew told CBC, “knowing that it’s still here, but it’s about to disappear.”
CPKC spokesperson Terry Cunha declined to discuss the incident, but said in a statement the railway “works with federal, provincial and local law enforcement agencies executing a number of strategies to identify and recover stolen vehicles.”
A week after Andrew’s car was stolen, a location tracker placed it at the Port of Montreal. (Christinne Muschi/The Canadian Press)
Next stop Montreal, then overseas
By Aug. 11, one of the AirTags was pinging from a rail yard in Smiths Falls, in eastern Ontario, then three days later from the Port of Montreal.
Again, Andrew said he alerted local police, but watched helplessly as the AirTag went offline for nearly a month. It surfaced again on Sep. 6, an ocean away, at one of Europe’s largest shipping ports in Antwerp, Belgium.
Then, on Sep. 26, the tracker — and the SUV — showed up at a port near Dubai, some 11,000 kilometres from Toronto.
Andrew’s father, a retired lawyer, had taken on the case in his spare time and spent hours researching how to get the vehicle back. The family hired a private investigator in the U.A.E. who found the vehicle in a used car lot. He sent Andrew pictures of the Yukon parked next to other GMC and Chevrolet trucks for sale.
The vehicle identification number (VIN), still visible through the windshield, matched that of Andrew’s stolen Yukon.
CBC has verified the VIN and the existence of the used car lot in the U.A.E. A reporter found a similar Yukon — made to “Canadian specifications,” according to the listing — for sale online near Dubai last week for roughly $80,000. Andrew said the vehicle even had the same mileage as his Yukon: 46,000 kilometres.
Circumstances “unusual,” says senior detective
Asked about the incident, the Toronto Police Service confirmed in a brief statement, “the case is still very active.”
The Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) declined to comment on Andrew’s case. Spokesperson Rebecca Purdy said in an email that local police investigate vehicle thefts, and that the CBSA “acts on 100 per cent of referrals from them to stop stolen vehicles from leaving the country.”
The agency said it intercepted 1,806 stolen vehicles in 2023, a 34 per cent increase from the previous year.
A senior Ontario Provincial Police detective told CBC it would be “unusual” for law enforcement to be unable to retrieve a stolen vehicle if they were told its location.
“If we know it’s at a container lot or a container yard or the ports in Montreal, we’ll make every effort to obtain it and get it back,” said Det. Insp. Scott Wade, deputy director of the province’s Organized Crime Towing and Auto Theft Team.
A 2022 GMC Yukon XL is seen near the Toronto driveway where it was stolen in May 2023, three months before a nearly identical Yukon was reported stolen from the same spot. Andrew said there was only one difference between the two stolen SUVs: this one had silver rims, the other had black rims. (Name withheld)
He urged victims of auto theft not to try to reclaim the vehicle themselves without first contacting police.
Wade said in an interview it’s “alarmingly common” for criminals to move stolen vehicles in containers on trains or trucks, then to export them to the Middle East, Europe or northern Africa. Previous CBC News investigations have also uncovered stolen Canadian vehicles in West Africa.
“Right now, they’re making so much money shipping cars that the low risk and high reward is too lucrative for organized crime [to pass up],” Wade said.
Andrew said the second vehicle theft from his driveway made him want to take action, because it felt like “a violation.”
“You read in the news every day that there’s more and more cars being stolen,” Andrew said.
Andrew and his father have contacted both Emirati police and Interpol to demand they retrieve the vehicle. On Monday, he said the Yukon remained parked in the same used car lot in the U.A.E., according to the location of the AirTags.
VANCOUVER – Contract negotiations resume today in Vancouver in a labour dispute that has paralyzed container cargo shipping at British Columbia’s ports since Monday.
The BC Maritime Employers Association and International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 514 are scheduled to meet for the next three days in mediated talks to try to break a deadlock in negotiations.
The union, which represents more than 700 longshore supervisors at ports, including Vancouver, Prince Rupert and Nanaimo, has been without a contract since March last year.
The latest talks come after employers locked out workers in response to what it said was “strike activity” by union members.
The start of the lockout was then followed by several days of no engagement between the two parties, prompting federal Labour Minister Steven MacKinnon to speak with leaders on both sides, asking them to restart talks.
MacKinnon had said that the talks were “progressing at an insufficient pace, indicating a concerning absence of urgency from the parties involved” — a sentiment echoed by several business groups across Canada.
In a joint letter, more than 100 organizations, including the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, Business Council of Canada and associations representing industries from automotive and fertilizer to retail and mining, urged the government to do whatever it takes to end the work stoppage.
“While we acknowledge efforts to continue with mediation, parties have not been able to come to a negotiated agreement,” the letter says. “So, the federal government must take decisive action, using every tool at its disposal to resolve this dispute and limit the damage caused by this disruption.
“We simply cannot afford to once again put Canadian businesses at risk, which in turn puts Canadian livelihoods at risk.”
In the meantime, the union says it has filed a complaint to the Canada Industrial Relations Board against the employers, alleging the association threatened to pull existing conditions out of the last contract in direct contact with its members.
“The BCMEA is trying to undermine the union by attempting to turn members against its democratically elected leadership and bargaining committee — despite the fact that the BCMEA knows full well we received a 96 per cent mandate to take job action if needed,” union president Frank Morena said in a statement.
The employers have responded by calling the complaint “another meritless claim,” adding the final offer to the union that includes a 19.2 per cent wage increase over a four-year term remains on the table.
“The final offer has been on the table for over a week and represents a fair and balanced proposal for employees, and if accepted would end this dispute,” the employers’ statement says. “The offer does not require any concessions from the union.”
The union says the offer does not address the key issue of staffing requirement at the terminals as the port introduces more automation to cargo loading and unloading, which could potentially require fewer workers to operate than older systems.
The Port of Vancouver is the largest in Canada and has seen a number of labour disruptions, including two instances involving the rail and grain storage sectors earlier this year.
A 13-day strike by another group of workers at the port last year resulted in the disruption of a significant amount of shipping and trade.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 9, 2024.
The Royal Canadian Legion says a new partnership with e-commerce giant Amazon is helping boost its veterans’ fund, and will hopefully expand its donor base in the digital world.
Since the Oct. 25 launch of its Amazon.ca storefront, the legion says it has received nearly 10,000 orders for poppies.
Online shoppers can order lapel poppies on Amazon in exchange for donations or buy items such as “We Remember” lawn signs, Remembrance Day pins and other accessories, with all proceeds going to the legion’s Poppy Trust Fund for Canadian veterans and their families.
Nujma Bond, the legion’s national spokesperson, said the organization sees this move as keeping up with modern purchasing habits.
“As the world around us evolves we have been looking at different ways to distribute poppies and to make it easier for people to access them,” she said in an interview.
“This is definitely a way to reach a wider number of Canadians of all ages. And certainly younger Canadians are much more active on the web, on social media in general, so we’re also engaging in that way.”
Al Plume, a member of a legion branch in Trenton, Ont., said the online store can also help with outreach to veterans who are far from home.
“For veterans that are overseas and are away, (or) can’t get to a store they can order them online, it’s Amazon.” Plume said.
Plume spent 35 years in the military with the Royal Engineers, and retired eight years ago. He said making sure veterans are looked after is his passion.
“I’ve seen the struggles that our veterans have had with Veterans Affairs … and that’s why I got involved, with making sure that the people get to them and help the veterans with their paperwork.”
But the message about the Amazon storefront didn’t appear to reach all of the legion’s locations, with volunteers at Branch 179 on Vancouver’s Commercial Drive saying they hadn’t heard about the online push.
Holly Paddon, the branch’s poppy campaign co-ordinator and bartender, said the Amazon partnership never came up in meetings with other legion volunteers and officials.
“I work at the legion, I work with the Vancouver poppy office and I go to the meetings for the Vancouver poppy campaign — which includes all the legions in Vancouver — and not once has this been mentioned,” she said.
Paddon said the initiative is a great idea, but she would like to have known more about it.
The legion also sells a larger collection of items at poppystore.ca.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 9, 2024.
