Gun Crimes, Car Thefts, Smuggling, Violence Increase in Canada

"Rival gangs control parts of the tow-truck industry here, using the heavy-duty vehicles to transport drugs, extort car-crash victims with high fees and fake automobile accidents to defraud insurance."

"They once resolved their territorial differences with their fists, but now a wave of gun smuggling from the U.S. has turned their fights into a lethal blood sport."

Reporter Vipal Monga, Wall Street Journal

"Experts say organized smugglers are taking advantage of lax Canadian screening."

"U.S. Customs and border Protection records an 'encounter' in its database when it comes across someone who is inadmissible to the U.S., or when border patrol officers find someone who has illegally crossed the border into the U.S. between border posts."

CBC

Handguns are pictured near recovered stolen cars during a Toronto Police Service press conference in Toronto, Ontario on Wednesday, March 27, 2024. Police say the surge in auto thefts has led to rises in home invasions, violent robberies and gun violence throughout the Greater Toronto Area. (Greg Bruce/CBC)

 

Canada is fast gaining a reputation, under the Trudeau-led Liberal government, of being an unreliable partner to the United States on immigration, crime and border security. Migrants crossing illegally into Canada from the United States by their tens of thousands a few years ago, bypassing legitimate border stations where they knew they would be turned back to the U.S. transited for the purpose of entering Canada have hugely diminished in prevalence.

The preferred mode of entry by far now has become through flights into Canada where disembarking passengers declare on arrival that they are seeking haven, and Canada immigration and border agents simply rubber-stamp a refugee hearing date for them, since they are unequipped and incapable of any background checks to determine whether claimants have any legitimacy and above all, have no criminal records from their countries of origin which would make them inadmissible to Canada.

The mayor of Brampton, Ontario, Patrick Brown, spoke of the irresponsible immigration practices and policies attributable to the Liberal government, in an interview. His comments were directed to the flood of student visas that have allowed ostensible students from abroad to enter Canada for study and to take advantage of the lax entry requirements, with plans to become permanent residents. In the last few years such student visa entrants numbered a half-million annually.

With the presence of so many, a concomitant explosion of car thefts has been bedevilling Canada's residents and police forces in its largest cities. A growing number of gangs operate in the Toronto region where young men are paid to steal cars and drive them to rail terminals, there to be transported by shipping container to the Port of Montreal. Arrived in Montreal, the vehicles are off-loaded by organized crime groups at the port, loaded onto ships and exported globally.

Over $1 billion in value of purloined cars was represented by these thefts in the Province of Ontario alone. The preventive expedient of having government policing agencies inspecting such shipments would catch the problem in its end-game making it unprofitable for the gangs that control this crime of growing proportions, and thus serve to frustrate their purpose, persuading them there is no profit to be had and the runaway thefts would substantially subside.

Ottawa's dismal failure to prevent gun smuggling from the United States to Canada is yet another outstanding problem of long duration. The situation has been responsible for a dramatic increase in shootings and crime among tow-truck gangs that operate in Toronto where it is being recognized that the profits from car thefts sent overseas fund the gun-smuggling racket. 

Compared to 2023, shootings in Toronto have risen 50 percent, and homicides have increased up to 20 percent, caused in part by "the tow-truck violence", according to Inspector Paul Krawczyk of the Toronto Police Service guns-and-gangs unit. Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow faced the need to increase the police budget while investing in preventive programs in hopes of sidelining youth from joining gangs. "No doubt about it we are seeing way too many guns from the States coming across the border", she agreed.

It is clear that once again Canada's governing Trudeau Liberals have failed the test of good governance in this index as in so many others. It has not escaped the notice of both American presidential candidates that the U.S. border with Canada is becoming a vexing problem by a government that appears to have no real interest in finding ways to protect Canadians from the growing scourge of criminal violence.

Ontario Provincial Police and the Canada Border Services Agency said they've seized 598 stolen cars that were destined for export at the Port of Montreal, during a news conference on April 3. The vehicles had an estimated value of $35.5 million dollars. (Graham Hughes/The Canadian Press)