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:

Albania? I hear it’s a lovely place. But considering how the average exported car had a declared value of $13,355 and the cost of shipping a car in a container from Montreal will tack another $4,000 or so on top, I don’t see how this makes business sense. Who in Albania is paying $17,000 (in addition to bribes import fees and operating profit) for a used Canadian car? And what’s really weird is that used cars are still fetching record prices right here in Canada.

Of course, if the true acquisition costs for those cars didn’t include an initial purchase price, then the business case is a whole long more compelling. Sure, you’ll still need to go to the trouble of producing a fake bill of sale and a realistic fake VIN for the export declaration. But that’s nothing compared with the sophistication required to, say, clone a car’s proximity key or move a stolen car to Montreal undetected.

Wouldn’t it be ironic if it turned out that Statistics Canada has actually been unknowingly tracking and measuring Canada’s car theft industry all along?