Trudeau said he'll 'consider' tougher penalties for car theft, but don't get your hopes up
The auto-theft situation in Canada is bad, folks. Toronto is perhaps the worst off, with car thefts skyrocketing by 300 per cent since 2015. What’s more unsettling than the stats are the videos: in the worst cases, thieves brazenly steal cars at gunpoint.
But all of this has been of low concern to the current government until very recently. It should be of no surprise — as a party that sees public safety as a matter of admonishing police, confiscating lawfully-owned guns, freezing bank accounts of protesters and reducing punishments for crime, it’s not hard to see how car owners ended up suffering. Such are the consequences of a government that’s not interested in upholding property rights.
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While some might see the Liberals’ contempt for the shackles of capitalism as a good thing, it’s really not. Private property is easily one of the most important institutions on which Canada is built. It’s a nationwide pact that guards the right of every person to have their own stuff, which means every person can plan, long-term, to build a better life by accumulating their own stuff, making more stuff and perhaps selling stuff to others so that they can, in turn, improve their lives.
The state’s job in all this is to protect this stuff with an orderly, tax-funded system of courts and police that protect both the rich and the poor. The alternative is quite terrible: a free-for-all, with islands of private guards and gated communities in a sea of chaos (see South Africa for an extreme example).
The Liberals have pared that orderly system of law enforcement back, assuming, naively, that the country won’t descend into that chaotic free-for-all. Now, to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s credit, this has partly been the case: the stats show a long-term decline in stolen cars over the years: in 2007, 146,000 car thefts were reported (this figure includes attempts; 85 per cent of these thefts were completed); in 2018, stolen vehicle reports dropped to 86,000 — but by 2022, this figure was back up to 105,000.
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Half-decent figures end when one looks at Toronto, where the number of cars stolen doubled from 2018 to 2022. In that period, the Liberals took measures to reduce the number of criminals in jail by softening punishments, making indictable (serious) motor vehicle thefts punishable by house arrest in 2022 with the passing of Bill C-5. Since 2022, federal crime stats estimate a jump of 62 per cent in the number of gangs involved in car theft.
If the state doesn’t make a point of protecting people’s stuff, criminals will start to take that stuff. Cars, being expensive and particularly in-demand item post-pandemic, are a prime target.
Toronto hasn’t reached a level of societal breakdown as destitute as South Africa, but the unfair reality of soft-on-crime, lax-on-private-property is starting to emerge. Residents of the city’s wealthy Rosedale neighbourhood have turned to private security firms to patrol at night and guard homes when the owners are away. The wealthy also have the benefit of being able to absorb rising insurance premiums, which apply to everyone as more and more cars are stolen.
Meanwhile, how do the pillars of justice treat those responsible? First they gaslight, with the justice minister framing the crime problem as a matter of perception (his car was just stolen for the third time in three years). Next, they sit idly by as courts continue to impose embarrassingly-low punishments for high-cost crimes like auto theft.
To paint a picture, take the example of one Azad Sandhu in Burlington, Ont., who at age 18 helped an older man steal cars on test drives from dealerships. The judge noted that he was an “emotionally immature young man who has a high need for approval and lacks self-confidence,” making him vulnerable to peer pressure and antisocial behavior. For two counts of car theft, Sandhu was sentenced to a conditional discharge, which means that his criminal record is set to eventually disappear.
Canada doesn’t have a mandatory minimum sentence for vehicle theft, so this is what sentencing can be expected to turn into: a wrist-slapping exercise that sees the criminal as the primary victim of his own crime. Some commentators go so far as to make the delusional argument that auto theft is a “victimless” crime. This is why we can’t have nice things (in this case, car-dealer-free test drives).
Car theft is finally getting its day in the court of public opinion, which is at least something. Last Monday, Pierre Poilievre notably proposed a three-year mandatory minimum for three-time thieves (whether this could survive Supreme Court scrutiny is another question), while Trudeau “will consider” tougher penalties for the crime. Ottawa hosted a summit on the matter this week, and this was paired with an announcement of $28 million (probably a drop in the bucket) that’s supposed to help border services intercept stolen cars on the way out of Canada.
It’s a change in tone from the Liberals, but it doesn’t fix the basic problem that led to an upshoot in car theft to begin with: disdain for private property and disregard for citizens who have enough self-control to obey the law instead of resorting to criminality. If you live in Toronto, don’t get your hopes up just yet.
National Post
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