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Visiting the Port of Montreal on Tuesday, the Conservative leader dubbed it “a parking lot for thieves” amid a nationwide spike in car thefts.
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Standing before a backdrop of shipping containers awaiting departure in the Port of Montreal, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre held a campaign-style news conference Tuesday pledging to increase security measures to tackle a nationwide surge in car thefts.
Flanked by posters reading “stop the crime” and “stop car theft,” Poilievre said that “after eight years of Justin Trudeau,” Canadian cars are being stolen at historically high rates. Many are being shipped overseas from Montreal’s port, which Poilievre dubbed “a parking lot for thieves.”
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If elected in 2025, Poilievre promised he would invest in 24 X-ray scanners at a cost of $55 million for the country’s major federal ports in Montreal, Prince Rupert, Vancouver and Halifax, and hire a special team of 75 Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) officers to run the scanners “and catch stolen cars before they leave our country.”
Thirty of those agents would be placed in Montreal.
To finance the new hires, Poilievre said he would “fire useless management consultants at CBSA.”
“Common sense Conservatives will reverse Trudeau’s reckless policies that have turned our federal ports into parking lots for stolen cars,” Poilievre said.
His plan comes days before the federal Liberals are set to hold a national summit on combating auto theft with police, border agents and industry executives.
The Insurance Bureau of Canada says auto theft has become a national crisis, with more than 200 vehicles stolen on average every day. In the first half of last year, auto theft jumped 31 per cent in Ontario and 17 per cent in Quebec. That came after a 50-per-cent jump in both provinces from 2021 to 2022. More than 9,500 cars were stolen in Montreal in 2022, and that figure was surpassed in 2023.
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Car theft is adding a further financial burden to cash-strapped Canadians, Poilievre said. Car theft claims in Ontario were up 329 per cent in the first half of 2023, totalling $700 million in losses for insurance in Canada. The Insurance Bureau of Canada estimates this costs every driver in Ontario an extra $130 a year.
The Montreal announcement also came the day after Poilievre pledged a series of tough-on-crime initiatives meant to deter car thieves. They included increasing mandatory prison time for repeat car thieves from six months to three years, and ending house arrest for people convicted of car theft. Auto thieves should not be allowed to serve their sentence “in their living room watching Netflix,” Poilievre said.
Asked whether he planned to “mend fences” with Montreal Mayor Valérie Plante after tweeting that she was “incompetent” due to the city’s drop in home construction, and then referring to her as incompetent in a second tweet when she went to meet Trudeau, Poilievre responded the question was unjust.
“It’s an unfair question because you failed to point out that I have called other mayors right across the country incompetent. In fact I think there are even more incompetent mayors in other regions of the country,” he said.
“The problem is that Justin Trudeau is giving them our tax dollars. It’s sad when politicians feel insecure. But you know what’s more sad? When single mothers can’t afford to pay their rent.”
In response to his comment about housing policies, Plante replied to Poilievre that “common sense” is also to “understand that in Quebec, federal funding for housing does NOT go through the cities.”
She later told the Montreal Gazette: “It’s OK that he doesn’t agree, or that maybe some of the things are not working well in Montreal. It’s totally fine. But to insult me and to insult other mayors isn’t what we expect from a political leader.”
rbruemmer@postmedia.com
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https://montrealgazette.com/auto-news/local-content/car-theft-ontario-canada-federal-investment-summit
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