What’s behind Canada’s staggering rise in youth carjackings and pharmacy robberies?

Carjackings are up more than 100% in Canada’s largest city after a string of youth-armed incidents and robberies have rocked the country. 

Police officials claim the rise in violent crime is due to a number of factors. But organized crime, the opioid epidemic, and large sums of money are all driving Canadian youth in larger cities to turn to crime as a means to make a living. 

Teens can earn up to $10,000 dollars for stealing a luxury car and handing it over to older criminal groups who strip the cars of their identifiers and sell them overseas according to Toronto police. 

While $10,000 may not be enough to risk your life in prison, some teens view this ill-gotten cash as the only opportunity out of a life that is becoming increasingly burdensome in Canada’s largest cities. 

“This year we’ve seen numbers that we haven’t seen in quite a few years,” Police Inspector Rich Harris told Toronto Star’s journalist Jennifer Pagliaro.

Harris has been busy trying to warn the public about the growing carjacking problem and educating citizens on how to prevent their vehicles from being taken by Toronto’s roaming bands of teen criminals. 

Harris’ unit also handles Toronto’s retail and bank robbery crimes as well as home invasions and carjackings, all of which are up this year compared to 2021. 

This year alone, Harris’ unit has dealt with 164 carjackings compared to last year's 59. “Those are very concerning numbers,” Harris said.

Jennifer Pagliaro noted that her research for the Toronto Star revealed that Canada’s youth violence is being increasingly driven by the country’s wealth inequality, which was exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic. 

“Experts on youth violence worry ongoing inequalities, highlighted by the pandemic, are contributing to the allure of violent crimes that offer “life-changing” money, Pagliaro said.

“Those challenges are not unique to Toronto and are evident in other cities,” Pagliaro added, “including across the border.”

In Vancouver, youth-related crime rates are also a major problem. The latest serious case of armed carjacking occurred on December 1st when a 15-year-old male went on a carjacking spree that only ended when he was apprehended by police. 

"It's very concerning, alarming, and frightening," said Constable Mansoor Sahak, "the victims in these cases were out enjoying an evening and the last thing that they expected was for something so violent and so brazen as this to happen."

But carjackings aren’t the only crimes worrying police across Canada. Pharmacy robberies in Toronto have increased 131% this year from 49 in 2021 to 113 in 2022. 

When it comes to pharmacy robberies, the criminals aren’t looking for the cash in the register drawer, they’re looking to score highly regulated and controlled drugs that they can sell later for huge profits. 

Canada is still facing a massive opioid epidemic with the Government of Canada reporting that the country sees about “20 deaths per day” due to the ever-present demand. 

“With the demand, you gotta get the supply,” Inspector Harris said, “the amounts that are taken would suggest that there’s no way someone’s just using that for recreational use.”

The most worrying aspect of all of this increased crime, Harris noted, was that none of them were victimless. The threat of violence was present in almost every situation and that information is worrying. 

“It’s one of those trends that we want to see curbed immediately,” Harris added, “because the lasting effects that it has on the victims of these crimes, you can’t measure.”