Canada’s 10 Most Stolen Cars in 2023

Cadillac, Mercedes-Benz and Jaguar, come on down — you’re the newest contestants on Équité Association’s Canada’s Most Stolen Vehicles list based on theft frequency. 

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Canada’s most stolen vehicles list for 2023 has been released, including a breakdown by province. There are some notable shifts, none of which portend good things for those who own vehicles coveted by theft rings, and all of us who insure any vehicle. 

Canada has crowned a new leader, with the 2021 Toyota Highlander nabbing the trophy away from the Honda CR-V, a repeating winner. Or loser. The 2021 CR-V slides to fourth place.

Canada’s 10 Most Stolen Vehicles in 2023 by Number of Thefts

The top 10 list is informative, but what matters more is the likelihood of your car being taken. The theft frequency is more revealing than how many of a certain model disappeared. That Honda CR-V was a top target for years (and still is), arguably because it is also one of the most numerous vehicles on our roads. For 2023, 487,962 were registered, and 2,988 were stolen: 0.61%. Consider the Highlander: 123,532 licenced, but 3,414 stolen; 2.76%. Vehicle owners can’t glance at these lists and breathe a sigh of relief because they’re not on it. You need to know the likelihood of it happening.

Some trends are troubling, and indicate where car theft is headed. There are some first-time new entrants onto the theft frequency list: the Cadillac Escalade Series (2021) debuts at number 4, the Mercedes-Benz G-Class (2019) comes in at 9, closely followed at 10 by the Jaguar F-Pace (2020).

Canada’s 10 Most Stolen Vehicles in 2023 by Theft Frequency

Ontario leads the losses in numbers, followed by Quebec and Alberta (per capita, Alberta is tops). Consider Ontario’s vulnerability (theft frequency): at the top, Land Rover Range Rover. There were 20,621 registered, 1,411 stolen for a 6.84% theft frequency. Next is the manufacturer’s Defender with 1,724 registered, 112 stolen, 6.46% theft rate. In third place, the new entrant, the Cadillac Escalade Series with 7,971 registered and 430 taken, 5.4% theft rate. 

Ontario’s 10 Most Stolen Vehicles in 2023 by Theft Frequency

For years, theft lists were dominated by older pickup trucks with little or no theft deterrents. They were often used to commit other crimes, like yanking ATMs out of bank vestibules. Now it’s overwhelmingly about organized crime. Canada has become a hotspot for car theft and is used globally as a shopping basket, with vehicles often stolen to order. Ontario and Quebec, in particular, sport the highest theft rates in Canada due to both their proximity to the Port of Montreal and the concentration of wealth especially in the GTA neighbourhoods.  

Sid Kingma, Équité Association’s director of investigative services in Western Canada, says Alberta still has its traditional high theft of older pickup trucks but is also seeing an increase in both exported vehicles to both coasts, and VIN fraud. The false vehicle registration numbers “impact the integrity of Service Alberta. Invented VINs fool the software, and thieves target vulnerable people to front their fake registrations,” he says. Ontario police recently arrested more Service Ontario employees for their role in revinning (a term so new my autocorrect doesn’t recognize it yet) vehicles, though Kingma says Service Alberta is not finding that in that province.

In July, there was a reported decline of 17% in auto theft in Canada. Bryan Gast, vice president of the investigative services division at Équité Association, was cautiously optimistic and is still tempering his optimism. “That drop can be attributed to the push of law enforcement and the money from governments allocated to tackle car theft,” he says. “Interpol and the RCMP are in constant contact, and we’ve been recovering more vehicles after they’ve reached their destinations, as well as intercepting more at the port.” Theft cost this country $1.5 billion last year according to Gast, and that number is growing. He’s blunt: “There will be no sustained decline until manufacturers have a legislated standard they must adhere to.”

Canada joined the 196 countries in Interpol’s Stolen Motor Vehicle database last year and was instantly in the top 10. Gast cites the global cooperation from numerous levels of law enforcement as playing a large role in recovering stolen vehicles. But now the issue, quite pointedly, is the ease with which these vehicles can be stolen in the first place. Cops running around chasing stolen cars is a ridiculous waste of resources when the cars shouldn’t be so easily stolen in the first place. Hello, manufacturers?

You’ve been told by authorities and media to lock your vehicle, use your garage, get aftermarket immobilizers and tracking systems, use a club, a wheel lock, an ODB lock, get a Faraday pouch and a dozen other things. You’ve also watched as car theft has skyrocketed, becoming more violent, and your insurance rates keep heading up. News reports of people who have lost a coveted car and replaced it with the same thing (sometimes multiple times) have had people yelling, “Why would you buy something you know is going to be stolen?”

It was never a fair accusation, leaving those second most responsible for the theft off the hook. Stop blaming your neighbour for driving something thieves want, and start blaming manufacturers who refuse to combat the theft in the first place. 

CAA has been a proponent among insurance companies to push for prevention (theft deterrent) over recovery (tracking systems). I asked if the requirement of aftermarket prevention methods has lowered the theft of the many popular vehicles on their surcharge list. “To date, we have found that insured vehicles equipped with a professionally installed after-market engine immobilizer, for which the certificate of installation was provided, have not been stolen but damaged. So, while we have not seen any theft claims – we have seen damage claims for those particular cars,” reports CAA. No theft claims. Manufacturers could put this in every car.

“In order to sustainably address the auto theft crisis in Canada, solutions must evolve from focusing on the recovery of stolen vehicles to preventing vehicles from being stolen in the first place, starting with updating Canada’s outdated Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Regulations (i.e., ULC 338 Standards),” says Terri O’Brien, President and Chief Executive Officer of Équité Association. Everyone from law enforcement to politicians has been dancing around this obvious solution, but now it seems the ground is shifting. The emperor has no clothes; your vehicle is vulnerable to theft because the company that made it isn’t doing all it can to prevent it. Canada must legislate these standards to combat what has become a crisis — and one that is getting worse, and more deadly.

Your car should have something like a PIN code, available in some Teslas. In the same way it’s difficult to access a locked phone or computer or bank account, remember that car thieves are in the business of hacking in and getting away fast. Even if a PIN could be hacked (ever tried to get into someone else’s phone? Of course you haven’t), it takes time. The aftermarket immobilizer GHOST-II uses an owner-set PIN-type system. Manufacturers can do this. Why won’t they?

Gast mentions a manufacturer concern of someone getting violent in order to get your PIN from you. Fair, but violence in car theft has already escalated to guns and home invasions; I’d yell out my PIN to anyone about to hurt me over a car. Manufacturers also say that technicians need to access your car to work on it. I have no problem giving my PIN to my dealer. You can always reset it if you like. Anything that will stop some menace in my driveway at 2 a.m. from stealing my car in 30 seconds sounds good to me. 

Canada is in an auto theft crisis. Lists indicating what is most vulnerable are a useful tool, but it’s also a direct shot across the bow to consumers: all new(ish) vehicles are vulnerable, especially the coveted SUVs that grew to 60% of Canada’s new car market this month. This is not someone else’s problem. 

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