Montreal Port Official Says Organized Crime Networks ‘Might’ Be Operating at Port

A shipping container is loaded onto a container ship in the Port of Montreal on Sept.19, 2023. (The Canadian Press/Christinne Muschi)

A senior official in the Montreal Port Authority says organized criminals may be operating in the Port of Montreal and exporting stolen vehicles.

Félixpier Bergeron, the director of port protection and business continuity at the Montreal Port Authority, made the comment while appearing before the Commons public safety committee on April 18.

“We acknowledge there might be some criminal organizations operating in the port,” said Mr. Bergeron.

The committee is conducting a study of the rise in stolen vehicles in Canada amid increased government scrutiny. Most of the vehicles are said to be stolen in the Toronto area and shipped through the Port of Montreal.

Mr. Bergeron told MPs organized criminals are “everywhere” in society, but said efforts were made over the years to manage port access, preventing them from operating openly.

“It doesn’t mean that they can’t bribe someone,” he added.

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According to Mr. Bergeron, ports were no longer considered a destination for criminality but a “conduit,” saying that organized criminals “do the stuff before the port and after the port.”

“They don’t do stuff in the port because the detection rate is too high for them,” he said.

He noted that only a fraction of those who work at the port authority are required to have a security clearance.

Mr. Bergeon said though the port authority manages access to the port, he said that of the 25,000 people who have access, only around 200 of the 1,200 longshoremen working on site are required to obtain a security clearance from Transport Canada.

The Port of Montreal has been described as a hub for stolen cars, with nearly 600 vehicles being recovered recently in a joint law enforcement operation. Équité Association, an anti-crime organization composed of insurance companies, was also involved in the investigation. Vice-president Bryan Gast told The Canadian Press earlier this month that stolen vehicles from the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) are put in containers and shipped through the port alongside fraudulent paperwork.

Between mid-December 2023 and the end of March, police in Montreal inspected 390 different shipping containers and found a total of 598 stolen vehicles in a joint effort with Ontario Provincial Police and the Canada Border Services Agency.

The vast majority of the vehicles found were linked to thefts in the GTA, including 215 from Toronto and 125 from the neighbouring Peel region.

Toronto Police Chief Myron Demkiw said last month that car thefts have become so rampant that the city sees a car stolen every 40 minutes on average, with over 12,000 stolen last year.

The presence of criminal elements operating from Canadian ports has been known by authorities for some time. Private research produced for Public Safety Canada in 2011 on organized crime in ports notes that stolen cars and domestically produced synthetic drugs were the illegal goods most often shipped through commercial ports. The research notes that the largest smuggling cases investigated by police involved corruption.

The authors of the report labelled Montreal, Vancouver, and Halifax as the most vulnerable ports due to the volume of traffic going through them.

The Canadian Press contributed to this report.