A Brampton man is speaking out after thieves smashed his door with a brick and surged into his home where his children were sleeping, demanding his car keys, telling the terrified family they had a gun.
Vinay Saini told CTV News he wants answers from all levels of government as to why car thefts have become so common in the Greater Toronto Area that he and many of his neighbours don’t feel safe in their homes.
“And they’re yelling, ‘Give us the keys, give us the keys. We have a gun.’ My five year old was standing next to me yelling at the guy. I don’t know what came into my mind,” Saini said in an interview.
“I was thinking about my 16-month-old. I’m like, if something happens to me today, what’s going to happen to my 16-month-old?”
Surveillance video shows a white Range Rover pull in front of his house and one man dressed in black-clad gets out to try and open the door of the BMW parked in the driveway. He appears to try the door, while two others jump out of the car and head straight for the home.
One smashes the glass and the others start kicking the door in. In seconds, the confrontation between the family ends when Saini’s wife makes a sudden noise and the crew scatters and rushes back into the waiting Range Rover, which speeds away.
Saini’s BMW was damaged, leaving him paying a pricey deductible. The people targeting his car are among those tied to the lucrative international trade in stolen Canadian vehicles.
Thieves that used to use high-tech tactics to hack the cars and drive them away are trading tech for brute force, officials say.
Once they have the keys, the cars can be driven to Canadian ports and loaded on shipping containers for resale in overseas markets.
Surging car thefts in recent years have prompted national attention, with a federal government summit calling for co-operation between multiple levels of government, police forces, and auto manufacturers.
Brampton Mayor Patrick Brown said in an interview he believes the federal government should be focusing on the ports, introducing scanners that could search containers quickly.
“Because it’s so lucrative, literally organized crime is banging down doors. We’re seeing violent carjackings. And so whatever steps residents take to stop organized crime from stealing their cars, as long as it’s easy to smuggle the cars out of Canada, organized crime will find new ways to get cars that are more brazen and more violent,” Brown said.
Peel Police statistics show that there have been some 2000 cars stolen so far this year, which puts it on track to match last year’s figures, despite previous years of double digit increases.
Over in Toronto, police statistics actually show a decline so far this year, with 2661 thefts in 2024, which is down from last year at this time, which was 3,025 – a sign some of these measures could be having an impact.
Saini says the figures are still too high and wants answers from officials about why his family ended up being put at risk.
He said he has joined a group of neighbours who are pooling resources to hire a private security patrol.
Dynamic Security’s Randeep Sandhu says the company has gotten many more requests for help since it started offering the service about a month ago.
“We started out with 25 houses but now we have 200 and are still growing. Yesterday we got a call for another 100 houses. It’s growing very much,” Sandhu said.