As easy as stealing a car from a Canadian

  

I may be naïve, but how exactly do stolen cars from Canada keep getting shipped to Africa? 

I can understand small packages... Little packets of drugs in and out of our country are easy to smuggle (I do not speak from experience). But these are cars... Honking-big luxury SUVs! Yet all it takes, it seems, is to drive a stolen car into an empty cargo shipping container. 

If this can happen that easily, how in the world do we ever think we can stop drugs from entering our borders? I’m not talking about immigrants carrying a backpack of fentanyl on them, which isn’t the way drugs typically enter the U.S. As I’ve learned through many entertaining yet educational TV shows, NAFTA opened a highway for drugs to travel into America by the reems of trucks transporting legitimate (and illegitimate) goods through Mexico/U.S. border crossings. 

There's an endless stream of drugs entering our countries. The War on Drugs in the 1980s did not reduce drug use one iota in the U.S. Invading Afghanistan did nothing to stop the opium/heroin drug trade. This shouldn’t come as a surprise, but America is also pretty good at producing its own drugs. Doctor-prescribed opioids are still an issue some twenty-five years after a marketing scheme by Perdue Pharma made widespread addiction inevitable. 

But about those cars... How do they leave Canada? Do they just line them up at the shipyards? I suppose I should be thankful we live in land-locked Saskatchewan where car thefts are still a problem, but at least they can find your car locally. In my cousin's case, the cops caught the thief in his car at a Tim Horton's drive-thru. Apparently, he was in need of a double-double before shipping the car overseas. But once it's in Africa, as I watched on CBC's Marketplace, they become more difficult to track.

I had thought new technologies would reduce the number of stolen cars, but as it turns out, our push-button technologies are ripe for hacking. We may have to resort to more archaic anti-theft tools like... The Club. That’s that big iron bar that locks on to your steering wheel when parked. 

Twenty years ago, it was second nature to put on The Club every time I got out of my 1991 Honda Accord. Cars were being stolen like bikes, even from my workplace’s parking lot.

Bikes, I can understand, are easy to steal and hard to track. Until a few years ago, bikes were being stolen from the bike rack right alongside our office building. I hold the honour of preventing a co-worker's bike from being stolen after an ill-advised confrontation.  

To be clear, I don't recommend confronting thieves. But after seeing a suspicious character from our window, my co-worker and I rushed down to the bike rack. As the man began to walk away with a bike, I blocked his way with my co-worker hiding behind me (she's much smaller and smarter than me). I asked him, "What are you doing?" To which he responded, “This is my bike.” To which I responded, “Do you feel lucky, punk?" Alright, I probably said something more like, "Um, I don’t think so.” After a brief silent standoff, he dropped the bike and casually walked away. Again, I do not recommend.

I’ve passed guys riding bikes while balancing a second (presumably stolen) bike with their other hand, where I can only watch and sneer. It doesn’t help. They don’t care. 

Apparently, shoplifting is also becoming more widespread across North America. The young woman who used to live with us worked at a clothing store in downtown Regina. Granted, this is downtown Regina, but I found it surprising how shoplifting has become a normal part of life. There’s basically nothing anyone, including security, can do. They can yell at them to stop as they walk away with hundreds of dollars’ worth of clothing, but that’s about it. 

When I grew up, shoplifting was a big issue. You could go to jail! This still could happen, I’m sure, but resources are clearly limited. 

Times are different. Stealing seems too easy.  

As easy as driving a stolen car into a shipping container.