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FIRST READING: The uniquely pernicious Canadian crime trend sweeping the country

September 10, 2025
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Organizers shoplifters seen stuffing their bags with thousands of dollars of product at an Ontario LCBO.

First Reading is a Canadian politics newsletter curated by the National Post’s own Tristin Hopper. To get an early version sent directly to your inbox, sign up here.

TOP STORY

It’s arguably the most brazen symptom of a Canadian system that offers minimal consequences for crime: A group of thieves calmly walk into a store, fill their bags with thousands of dollars of high-value merchandise, and leave.

This week in Huntsville, Ont., four men walked into a Home Depot, loaded up carts with $8,000 in power tools and exited without paying. Last month, video from a Dollarama from Regina suggested five shoplifters seemingly rushed in right after opening, filled their bags and walked out.

Also in August, a group of four people outside a Safeway in Edmonton were allegedly caught on a viral video loading up a Mercedes SUV with an estimated $1,500 in stolen groceries.

But the trend has been most apparent at liquor stores.

In February, after a couple in Guelph, Ont., allegedly walked out of a liquor store with $1,000 in spirits, a local police spokesperson said such thefts had been happening every few days. “Over the last several months, there has been a noticeable increase in the number and size of these LCBO thefts,” Scott Tracey, media coordinator with the Guelph Police Service, told CityNews.

In a late August incident that was widely circulated on social media, six men entered a Kitchener, Ont. liquor store in late afternoon and nonchalantly filled bags with premium liquor before walking out without paying. The Waterloo Regional Police Service was able to circulate a substantial gallery of pictures of alleged suspects, since other patrons filmed it all with mobile phones.

Ontario Premier Doug Ford would specifically reference the Kitchener theft in a press conference, calling the men a “brazen bunch of crooks.”

These organized thefts have helped make shoplifting one of the fastest growing categories of Canadian crime.

A July data release by Statistics Canada found that shoplifting had increased 66 per cent between 2014 and 2024. There were 182,361 police-reported incidents in 2024 alone; an average of 500 per day.

And those are just the incidents getting reported.

Save Our Streets, a newly formed B.C. group pushing for reduced civic disorder, has often made the case that businesses are so demoralized by high crime that many have stopped reporting incidents.

“People have just given up on reporting these crimes because they know the police just don’t have the resources to do everything we’re asking them to do,” Save Our Streets co-founder Jess Ketchum told Global News in July.

As to why organized shoplifting is so pernicious in Canada, one factor is that the vast majority of shoplifters get away with it. B.C., for instance, charted 36,851 police-reported shoplifting incidents, but only 4,040 people charged.

And even if caught, the penalties for shoplifting – even of the organized high-value variety – are extraordinarily light.

Earlier this year, a serial shoplifter in Prince George, B.C., was handed 30 days of house arrest, with allowances to leave for work or medical appointments.

Brampton, Ont. man Satnampal Chawla was found to be the ringleader of a multi-million dollar shoplifting ring targeting major retailers and reselling the stolen goods on Amazon. He was ultimately handed six months of house arrest, with the judge wishing Chawla well in his new career as a real estate agent.

After an RCMP anti-shoplifting blitz in Langford, B.C., arrested 27 people, one third of those were immediately spared any criminal consequences. A police statement said they “met the criteria for Restorative Justice and were deferred away from the criminal justice system.”

In March, even a man who charged into a Vancouver London Drugs with a pipe and threatened to kill staff was given just a 60-day sentence.

“Perpetrators see little consequence for their actions within the justice system,” John Graham with the Retail Council of Canada told CTV in May.

The council has estimated that $9.1 billion was lost to shoplifting in 2024. For context, in that same year, the combined cost of running every police agency in the country was about $20 billion.

However, an unofficial response to the organized shoplifting trend has started to emerge: Security guards or members of the public taking the initiative to tackle and restrain organized shoplifting gangs before they can get away.

A recent web video shot at an LCBO in Etobicoke shows staff holding a man on the ground who had allegedly attempted to walk out with stolen product.

This week, after three teens allegedly attempted to rob a Kitchener, Ont., jewelry store, they were chased, tackled and held by bystanders until Waterloo Regional Police could take them into custody.

Police officials, however, urged other bystanders to avoid doing similarly, saying that burglars can be unpredictable and violent. “We do want to ensure that everyone is safe,” said Waterloo spokeswoman Const. Melissa Quarrie.

 

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This isn’t a Canadian politics news item, but this week three prime ministers just so happened to resign within the space of 24 hours. French prime minister François Bayrou resigned after losing a confidence vote. Japan’s Shigeru Ishiba resigned after his party suffered crushing losses in mid-term elections. And Nepali prime minister Khadga Prasad Oli

resigned

amid unrest after his government blocked several social media sites and then fatally shot 19 protesters at a demonstration against the move.

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