OTTAWA — The pace of auto theft is dropping in Canada thanks to collective efforts to crack down on thieves, says an industry group focused on insurance fraud and crime.
Équité Association said in a report released Monday that the number of vehicles reported stolen nationally dropped 19.1 per cent in the first half of 2025 compared to the same period in 2024.
Just over 23,000 vehicles were reported stolen in the first six months of the year in Canada, the report said.
The decline is particularly stark in Ontario and Quebec, which saw annual drops of 25.9 per cent and 22.2 per cent, respectively.
The year-over-year drops are more modest in Atlantic Canada and Western Canada at roughly nine per cent. Alberta saw a decline of 12.5 per cent.
Bryan Gast, national vice-president of investigative services at Équité Association, credits greater public awareness of the threat and efforts by various levels of government and law enforcement agencies to collectively tackle the problem.
"It's really definitely a collaborative effort," he said.
Gast said law enforcement agencies in Ontario and Quebec in particular have stepped up enforcement with police units dedicated to vehicle theft.
So far this year, residents of Ontario and Quebec have reported 9,600 and 3,889 vehicle thefts respectively — high numbers that Gast attributed to the provinces' larger populations and proximity to the Port of Montreal.
With 4,411 vehicles reported stolen over the first half of 2025, Gast said Alberta continues to lead the country in auto theft on a per-capita basis.
Statistics Canada data released earlier this week confirms national progress on the file. The agency reported a 17 per cent annual drop in the rate of police-reported motor vehicle thefts, down to 239 incidents per 100,000 people last year.
In 2023, the number of auto thefts had increased 40 per cent over the historic low recorded in 2020, StatCan said.
That trend came to a head last year when the federal government convened a summit in February to address car thefts.
Ottawa followed up by giving the Canada Border Services Agency millions of dollars in new funding to track vehicles leaving through the country's ports, after having given Ontario $121 million in January of that year to tackle gang crime and auto thefts.
Gast said some of the progress can likely be attributed to Canadians' heightened awareness of the issue.
"Now I think you can talk to anybody and, if their car hasn't been stolen, they know somebody's car that has been stolen," he said.
"I think they are taking those precautions and some of those steps to make their vehicle less of a target."
Vehicle recovery rates also rose 3.4 percentage points year over year to 56.5 per cent in the first half of 2025, Équité Association said. The organization said that was nearing the "pre-crisis" level of 57.2 per cent recorded in 2021.
Despite progress on vehicle theft, the Insurance Bureau of Canada warned it's still a "significant concern" and "far from the only factor contributing to rising auto insurance costs."
"A combination of inflation, tariffs, rising repair and vehicle replacement costs, legal pressures, and regulatory challenges are driving rates up across the country," the bureau said in a media statement.
Tariffs on vehicle parts are driving up the costs of repairs and replacement cars, the bureau noted.
Gast said that while it's not clear yet, tariffs might be playing a role in the increase Équité Association is seeing in domestic chop shops and vehicle parts being sent overseas.
He said that whenever there's a disruption to supply chains — like the one that made semiconductor inputs a hot commodity during the COVID-19 pandemic — the criminal element tends to adapt to meet that demand.
While he's encouraged by the progress Canada has posted to date in tamping down auto theft, he said now is not the time to let up.
"Don't consider the problem solved," he said. "To keep it manageable and the numbers trending in the right direction, I think we still need to focus on it."
This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 28, 2025.
Craig Lord, The Canadian Press
