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.
“Project Vector disrupted criminal networks that profit from the Canadian export market to sell stolen vehicles,” Marty Kearns, the deputy commissioner of the Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) said at a press conference in Montreal.
Police hailed the project as an important step in their fight against organized criminal networks which they say are behind a recent surge in car thefts in Eastern Canada.
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.
Kearns said the vehicles, valued at $34.5 million, were to be sold on foreign markets around the world, in Asia, Europe, Africa, the Middle East and in South America.
Bluetooth trackers are becoming increasingly popular with people looking to keep track of valuables, but those hoping to track down stolen items or lost luggage may find they’re not a perfect solution.
Car thefts have surged in recent years. In Ontario and Quebec, they increased by 48 per cent and 58 per cent respectively between 2021 and 2023.
But police have said they are cracking down on organized crime, which they say is behind the rise in stolen vehicles.
Since October 2023, a series of major raids led to the arrests of at least 121 suspects with 730 charges laid.
But Wednesday’s announcement was the largest recent example of police action on stolen vehicles.
However, though police hailed the recovery of nearly 600 vehicles as significant, in 2023, car thefts in Ontario and Quebec topped 45,000.