A police operation at the Port of Montreal led to the recovery of 598 stolen vehicles since December, many of them stolen from southern Ontario and slated for sale overseas.

The operation, dubbed Project Vector, involved more than a dozen police forces from across Ontario and Quebec.

As part of the project, police conducted hundreds of inspections on shipping containers in the Port of Montreal. They recovered stolen vehicles, most of them taken from the Greater Toronto Area (GTA).

[…] though police hailed the recovery of nearly 600 vehicles as significant, in 2023, car thefts in Ontario and Quebec topped 45,000.

  • @John_McMurray
    5•1 month ago

    It’s easy enough hide cars when you have garage and shipping containers, border patrol is more concerned with things entering the ports than leaving, falsify some paperwork, etc.

    • @Showroom7561
      4•1 month ago

      But aren’t containers inspected to confirm it matches their manifests, or to make sure they’ve paid any (if any) fees involved with exporting certain types of goods?

      I mean, holy hell. You can get stopped at a border as an individual who has a few pieces of contraband fruit in your backpack. But the car theft industry seems to be getting away with exporting hundreds of millions of dollars worth of stolen vehicles. It’s infuriating.

      The government shouldn’t have to put in $100+ million to assign a task force to catch these guys. Literally the port authority has a job they already get paid to do!