Other provinces inspect vehicles with problematic VINs, why not Ontario?

After a 32-year career as a theft investigator with the Ontario Provincial Police, John Tod started working for a business that helps provincial governments sniff out phony vehicle registrations as a way to curb vehicle theft.

Today, he's the head of eastern operations for VIN Verification Inc., a company under contract in Alberta and Saskatchewan to verify vehicle identification numbers (VINs) when a vehicle ownership is transferred. 

"In about one of every 90 cases, we call the police because we've identified the vehicle as likely stolen," said Tod. 

The 17-digit VIN is a vehicle's serial number, intended to help governments, police and insurers link a vehicle to its owner to prevent all manner of auto theft and fraud. 

In Alberta and Saskatchewan, in cases where a clerk in the vehicle registration office or insurance company finds an issue with the VIN of a vehicle being registered, the vehicle is flagged for inspection. That's were Tod's company steps in. They have service agreements in those provinces to carry out the inspections.

However, those inspections do not happen in Ontario, which makes it easy for thieves to sell stolen vehicles in Canada's largest province with little fear someone will ever check on the vehicle's history, Tod said. 

Province warned about VIN problem

Tod reached out to CBC News after this story was published, about how trailers described as "homemade" can be registered with no VIN on file with the province. He said the lack of an inspection program in Ontario is actually making the province a destination for thieves to register vehicles stolen in other jurisdictions.

"I've been warning the Ontario government about this for four years," he said.

Every employee of VIN Verification Inc., is a former police officer, with expertise in rooting out VIN numbers that have been altered, removed or duplicated. A goal of their work is to prevent a stolen vehicle from going into the database frequently and becoming legitimized in the process.

Although only about two per cent of vehicles entering the registry are flagged for inspection in the provinces where his company works, it's enough to make a significant dent in curbing the trade of stolen vehicles and trailers, Tod said. In Ontario, where about one million vehicles are added to the registry each year, it amounts to be big problem, he said.

"We're now talking about 10,000 to 20,000 vehicles a year being entered onto the Ontario registry that in other jurisdictions would require a mandatory inspection," he said. "That undermines the integrity of the registry. We know for a fact that there are vehicles being re-VINed that are stolen." 

Tod would like his company to be considered for verification work in Ontario if the province ever decides to start inspections. However, his main concern is for the integrity of the VIN database, he said.

Police are starting to raise the issue, particularly in response to last week's daylong national summit on the growing auto theft problem.

OPP Commissioner Thomas Carrique, speaking in his role as head of the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police, told a House of Commons committee during that mandatory inspections of vehicles with problematic VINs should be mandatory. He also called for a national system of vehicle registrations. Right now, each province manages its own system. 

CBC News reached out to Ontario's Transportation Ministry for comment about the issue on Wednesday, but did not receive a reply.

Oshawa MPP Jennifer French, the opposition NDP's transportation critic, said the province needs to tighten up inspections to stop the VIN database from becoming flooded with false records and stolen vehicles. 

"We want to know that the vehicles out on the road are safe, but we also want to know that they're not stolen," she said. "The concerns raised about the VIN database are quite concerning. If the government isn't sure what their system is, then we have a problem."