Ottawa – The number of car flights is down in Canada thanks to collective efforts to fight thieves, according to a group specializing in insurance crime and fraud prevention.
Association equity reports that the number of vehicles declared stolen nationally decreased by 19.1 % in the first half of 2025 compared to the same period in 2024.
Just over 23,000 vehicles were declared stolen in the first six months of the year in Canada, we learned in the report published on Monday.
The decline is particularly marked in Ontario and Quebec, which have recorded decreases over a year of 25.9 % and 22.2 %, respectively.
Lowering from one year to the next are more modest in the Atlantic and Western Canada provinces, where they amounted to around 9 %. Alberta recorded a decrease of 12.5 %.
The national vice-president of investigation services at Equity Association, Bryan Gast, attributes the decline in theft of vehicles to greater awareness of the public and the efforts made by governments and the police.
“This is really a collective effort,” he said.
Mr. Gast noted that Ontario and Quebec police officers, in particular, have strengthened their repression measures thanks to units specializing in vehicle theft.
Since the beginning of the year, residents of Ontario and Quebec have reported 9,600 and 3889 flights of vehicles respectively, figures that Mr. Gast has attributed to the larger population of these provinces and their proximity to the port of Montreal.
Many measures
With 4,411 vehicles stolen during the first half of 2025, Mr. Gast stressed that Alberta continues to occupy first place in the country in terms of per capita vehicle flights.
The data published by Statistics Canada confirm the progress made nationally in this area. The agency reported an annual decrease of 17 % in the rate of engine vehicle flights reported to the police, which fell to 239 incidents per 100,000 inhabitants last year.
In 2023, the number of car flights increased by 40 % compared to the historically low level recorded in 2020, according to Statistics Canada.
This trend reached its climax last year, when the federal government summoned a summit in February to combat car flights.
Ottawa then granted the Canada Border Services Agency for millions of additional dollars to follow vehicles leaving the country by ports, after giving $ 121 million to Ontario in January of the same year to combat organized crime and car flights.
According to Gast, some progress made can probably be attributed to the increased awareness of Canadians to this problem.
“I think you can now talk to anyone and, if his car has not been stolen, he knows someone whose car has been stolen,” he said.
“I think people take precautions and certain measures so that their vehicle is less likely to be stolen.”
The recovery rate of vehicles also increased by 3.4 percentage points from one year to another to 56.5 % in the first half of 2025, depending on Association. This rate is close to the level “before the crisis” of 57.2 % recorded in 2021.
Impacts on insurance premiums?
Despite the progress made in the fight against theft of vehicles, the Canada insurance office warned that this problem remains “very worrying” and “far from being the only factor contributing to the increase in automotive insurance costs”.
“The combination of inflation, customs duties, increase in repair costs and replacement of vehicles, legal pressures and regulatory challenges increases prices throughout the country,” the office said in a statement.
Customs duties on car parts increase the costs of repairs and replacement cars, said the office.
Mr. Gast acknowledged that, although this is not yet clear, customs duties could play a role in the increase observed by equity association in the disassembly workshops of national vehicles and in the sending of spare parts abroad.
He added that, whenever there is a disturbance of the supply chains, like the one that made the semiconductor components highly sought after during the Cavid-19 pandemic, criminals tend to adapt to meet demand.
Although he is delighted with the progress made to this day by Canada in the fight against the theft of cars, he believes that the efforts should not be released.
“Do not consider the problem as solved,” he warned. For the situation to remain manageable and the figures continue to evolve in the right direction, I think we must continue to focus on this problem. ”