Pawnbrokers Act Needs Urgent Reform

6 May 2007

• Authored by the Federal/Provincial Affairs Committee
• Approved by the London Chamber Board of Directors
• Presented to and adopted by the Ontario Chamber Conference in May 2007

The Issue

Property crime directly or indirectly affects more Ontarians than any other criminal offence and is damaging not only Ontario's economy but its reputation as a good place to start and grow a business.

This is particularly evident in Ontario's susceptible hospitality and tourism sectors where operators have been hit with a rash of smash and grab thefts from their patron's automobiles. These patrons are the very people that our many tourism agencies and economic development commissions work extremely hard to attract to our province along with local residents who attend a variety of seminars, work shops, meetings and conferences at hotels and conference centres across the province.

While good progress has been made by municipal police forces that are already strained to the max in dealing with rising crime on a number of fronts around the province, in too many cases, their good efforts and those of the judiciary are thwarted because the spoils of these crimes all too often find their way into the hundreds of pawn shops that exist throughout Ontario.

Simply stated, it's just too easy to dispose of stolen property in a pawnshop, get the cash for the items and then proceed to feed the many addictions that are mainly at the root cause of this epidemic. This cycle must be broken if Ontario is grow.

Background

A study released by the Ontario Association of Chiefs of Police in June 2006 into the psychological, emotional, and financial impact on victims of residential break-and-enters underscores the serious nature of property crimes from the victim's perspective. All the while, an indeterminable number of criminals continue to use the services of pawn shops and second-hand dealers to convert stolen goods into cash.

The current Pawnbrokers Act was written in 1906 and is considered to be significantly outdated and relatively unenforceable by police departments across the Province of Ontario.

Repeated efforts by police associations to have the Act reformed to include the implementation of an automated data collection system to be used for the transfer of information about transactions occurring in these businesses has frankly fallen on deaf ears.

Both the Minister of Community Safety and Correctional Services and the Attorney General have indicated their support for this initiative, yet the problems still persist and the Act still needs reforming.

Recommendations

The Ontario Chamber of Commerce urges the Government of Ontario to:

1. Review existing legislation before the end of 2007 in regards to regulating pawnbrokers and specifically to include second-hand shops in order to improve upon the outdated Pawnbrokers Act; and
2. Legislate the implementation of an automated data collection system to be used for the transfer of information occurring in these businesses to local police services in compliance with Ontario's and Canada's Privacy of Information Acts.

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