CALGARY — Police in Alberta say auto thefts are becoming more sophisticated and owners should be more vigilant in preventing their vehicles from disappearing off the streets.
Alberta has become a hot spot in recent years for vehicle thefts with the highest per capita rate in Canada, based on a new report by the Équité Association, an insurance crime watchdog.
It's an issue that has long plagued eastern Canadian provinces but has only recently reached Alberta as criminals seek new opportunities to steal high-value cars.
"We are seeing offenders coming from out east and targeting vehicles here," said Edmonton police Staff Sgt. Ian Strom.
Canadian vehicle thefts are declining after peaking in 2022 and 2023, but Alberta's theft rate hasn't dropped as dramatically as other provinces. For 2024, auto thefts in the Prairie province declined about 10 per cent, eight percentage points lower than the average drop nationally.
In Quebec, auto thefts declined 32.4 per cent last year.
Strom said pickup trucks have always been targeted by thieves, but greater numbers of new, high-end trucks have become regular targets in recent years because of their value.
"Trucks are a very hot commodity and we've got, in Alberta, certainly our fair share of trucks," Strom said.
In the past, police were able to track down the vast majority of stolen vehicles. Until the past few years, Edmonton police would recover 80 per cent or more of stolen cars every year, Strom said.
But since about 2023, recovery rates in Alberta have fallen. In Edmonton, they've dropped to around 70 per cent, Strom said.
Sgt. Matt Hill, head of the Calgary Police Service's auto theft team, said police have gone from recovering between 90 and 95 per cent of all stolen vehicles to about 80 per cent.
Specific, higher-end models have increasingly become targets. Last July, Edmonton police recovered 12 stolen autos valued at $780,000, four of which were Lexus vehicles.
Police recommend owners leave tracking devices like AirTags in their cars, but they can be relatively easy for thieves to find. They also advise installing layers of protection like steering wheel locks or audible car alarms. Several insurers offer discounts on their policies for owners with anti-theft devices.
The trend also has implications for buyers using the private market. If police track down a car that's been illegally re-identified and sold to an unknowing buyer, the buyer will have no way of recouping their costs when authorities recover the car.
"We're going to come and recover that vehicle, and that loss is going to be on your shoulders," Strom said.
Those situations can be avoided by getting a vehicle history report before buying, he said.
Rapidly declining recovery rates also indicate a larger presence of organized criminal behaviour, police said.
"The vehicles, for lack of better words, disappear, which is very indicative of either them being shipped out of the country or fraudulently (reidentified) and then resold on the private market," Hill said.
Even so, a high number of car thefts are preventable. Hill said a large number of thefts are the result of owners leaving their cars running unattended, often in the winter.
Rampant car theft is an issue more familiar to residents of Ontario and Quebec, where organized crime and sophisticated techniques have dominated over the past several years.
Last year, about 50 per cent of stolen vehicles in Ontario were found and 43 per cent in Quebec were recovered, said Équité Association.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 13, 2025.
Matthew Scace, The Canadian Press
