Brampton Mayor Patrick Brown is questioning what he describes as "pushback" from the Port of Montreal against installing new container scanners.
During a panel discussion hosted by QP Briefing at the Albany Club in Toronto, Brown said he couldn't understand why Canada's second-largest port would be reluctant to have more scanners capable of detecting stolen vehicles in shipping containers.
"Unfortunately, the [federal] government doesn't have the courage to force the Port of Montreal to accept these," Brown said earlier this week. "They announced it at the auto theft summit and they've had a ton of pushback from the Port of Montreal."
"And my question is, why? Why is anyone pushing back against this?"
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In February, Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc convened a national summit on auto theft, where the feds announced a $28 million investment to help the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) improve its ability to locate stolen cars. Under the Customs Act, the Montreal port is a customs controlled area where CBSA officers have the authority to examine goods and conduct investigations.
While a portion of those funds were explicitly earmarked for "increasing the CBSA'a export examination capacity," Brown suggested the Port of Montreal was inexplicably hesitant to bring in additional scanners.
"Whose tipping them off?" he asked. "And why would the port not want a police investigation team to immediately go into that shipping container and look for the stolen goods?"
The Port of Montreal did not respond to iPolitics' multiple requests for comment.
Auto theft has reached a crisis point in Canada, with more than 105,000 vehicles stolen nationwide in 2022. As reported by other news outlets, a car was stolen every 40 minutes last year in Toronto alone.
Many of these cars are then shipped overseas through transportation hubs, like the Port of Montreal, which are widely considered to be havens for organized crime.
An initiative led by the Ontario Provincial Police earlier this year called Project Vector recovered nearly 600 vehicles from the Montreal port, most of which were taken from the Greater Toronto Area.
READ MORE: Feds, province pledge $121 million to combat soaring auto theft and gun crimes
While Brown admits there's no silver bullet to stop auto theft, he said brining in container scanners at key checkpoints would dramatically improve the odds of Canadian authorities detecting stolen vehicles before they're shipped abroad.
"Why is auto theft in Canada ten times the rate that it is in the U.S.?" said Brown. "Well, we scan less than one per cent of shipping containers [and], in the U.S., it's 45 per cent."
"In Canada, it's a 99 per cent chance you're going to get your stolen goods to the destination. So, it's high reward and low risk, and those who are profiting off this know that."
Brown said he would place four scanners, which he costed at $3.5 million, at the Port of Montreal, as well as one each at the CN intermodal hub in Brampton and the CP terminal in Vaughan.
"I think the prime minister and the minister of public safety need to say to the port and CBSA that this is happening and that we expect the same security at our ports that you see at any other industrialized country," he said. "There is a bucket that's leaking and, in Canada, that bucket is the Port of Montreal."
"If we fix this, we can change the dynamic in this country."
In a statement, CBSA spokesperson Jacqueline Roby said all shipping containers going through the Montreal port "must be declared and each declaration is subject to a risk assessment."
"Additionally, containers may be subject to non-intrusive inspections using detection technologies such as X-ray and gamma-ray machines, which can detect the presence of vehicles and many kinds of targeted goods," she continued. "Following this inspection, goods may be subject to further examination, which is required to establish the legitimate ownership."
Brown took issue with this approach, which he described as "an honour system," saying it's proven to be completely ineffective.
"You just have to promise on a piece of paper that there's no stolen goods," he said. "The honour system doesn't work and that's why I think it needs the political courage."
According to government figures, the number of stolen vehicles intercepted by the CBSA has increased every year since 2016. Last year, Canadian authorities identified 1,806 stolen cars, a number they're projected to surpass in 2024.