Using Government Data to Track the Car Theft Epidemic

What happens to all the cars that are being stolen from our driveways?

Canada is experiencing some nasty car theft numbers right now and I'd love to understand the underlying "business" model a bit better. Reports suggest that most of the stolen cars are left to "cool off" for a couple of days to make sure there aren't any tracking devices (not that the police have time to intervene even if there are) and are then shipped out of the country through the Port of Montreal.

And then what?

I’m only asking because an awful lot of cars have gone missing. The following chart - based on data provided by the Toronto Police Services - shows which direction theft rates are headed in Toronto. The nine-year total runs to more than 58,000. And that’s just Toronto.

The obvious focus on specific models suggests this is likely well organized: someone is thinking about customer demand. Here are the top ten targeted models snatched from Toronto driveways in 2022:

So if most stolen cars are eventually sold internationally, what do we know about those foreign markets? From Statistics Canada data I can see that, between January, 2016 and January, 2024, nearly 50,000 used passenger cars (powered by internal combustion engines with capacities between 1,000 and 3,000 cc) were exported from just Ontario to locations in the rest of the world. Of course, those might have been legally-owned cars. I have no real way to know for sure.

Breaking down that data, here were the top 10 destinations: