Ontario is planning public safety legislation that will target the registration of stolen vehicles

The Ford government Global News will introduce tough penalties for thieves who take legitimate vehicle identification numbers and apply them to stolen vehicles, Global News has learned, in a bid to tackle a growing car theft-related problem.

While multiple levels of government have poured hundreds of millions into cracking down on climate change car theft The crime wave has also alerted politicians to a second layer of crime targeting the 17-character unique identification number, known as VIN.

The code, which contains information about a vehicle’s make, model, year and manufacturing location and is widely considered a fingerprint for cars, has increasingly become a target for thieves looking to legitimize a stolen vehicle.

The Insurance Bureau of Canada says the process of “reVINing” is “particularly pronounced” in Ontario and has called on the Ford government to implement a series of reforms.

Internal government documents obtained by Global News suggest the Ford government has been keeping a close eye on the issue.

Over a 14-month period in 2023 and 2024, ServiceOntario investigated 615 cases of fraudulent vehicle registration, the government documents said, leaving police officers needing new tools to tackle the growing problem.

The Ford government now plans to introduce legislation to create a new Highway Traffic Act offense for knowingly providing a false vehicle identification number to the Department of Transport, with possible fines and prison sentences for convicted fraudsters.

“We are working on legislation to introduce some of the toughest penalties on the consequences of re-entering a VIN number,” Transport Minister Prabmeet Sarkaria said at a press conference on Sunday.

Although the minister did not provide details, internal documents show the penalties being considered:

• Fines between $50,000 and $75,000 for the first offense, and $75,000 to $100,000 for the second offense.
• Up to six months in prison
• Up to a driver’s license suspension for one year

According to government slides, the province initially considered a much lower fine of between $5,000 and $25,000 before dramatically increasing it in the final legislation.

While the strengthened laws are intended as a deterrent, it is unclear whether the Ford government will implement preventive measures that have had positive impacts in other provinces.

In 2021, while Caroline Mulroney was still Minister of Transportation, the province began consultations on how to improve Ontario’s dedicated VIN program.

Although the Department of Transportation requires an affidavit to assign an identification number, the province wanted feedback on whether it should implement an examination system that would charge applicants a fee.

A summary of the proposal pointed to Alberta and Saskatchewan using third-party examiners to conduct a detailed inspection of the vehicle and its history before a VIN is assigned, at a cost of between $100 and $500 for the applicant.

“After introducing third-party investigations into their assigned VIN programs, Alberta and Saskatchewan reported significant improvements to the integrity of their assigned VIN programs, including the recovery of stolen vehicles,” the proposal said.

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In the meantime, sources told Global News that the government has quietly implemented a half-dozen “mechanical changes” at ServiceOntario to address VIN-related fraud and close loopholes.

However, the exact details of the changes are being closely monitored for “operational security reasons” to ensure that fraud detection measures are not announced publicly.

NDP MPP Jennifer French has also called for an overhaul of the province’s VIN database following a number of police actions related to VIN-related fraud.

In one case, Toronto police charged a ServiceOntario employee who allegedly issued “legitimate-looking vehicle registrations” to “re-find stolen vehicles, effectively disguising them as legitimate.”

“We should expect that every VIN on the registry is legitimate,” French told Global News. “We should not question the legitimacy of the VIN database”

French called for clarity on how the fraud detection process within ServiceOntario would flag a potential case of re-VINing and strengthen the internal audit system.

“It’s a work in progress at best or, at worst, a mess,” French said of the ServiceOntario audit system. “We need to clean that up and make sure the VIN database has integrity.”

Global News asked the Ford government why it took so long to implement the changes and what came out of the 2021 consultation, but received no response.

The Insurance Bureau of Canada has called on the Ford government to take additional preventative measures, such as limiting public access to detailed vehicle information reports that could contain the unique VIN code, and has asked the federal government to create a national VIN database .

The province is expected to introduce its legislation on November 4.

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