Captured by a security camera, a small crowd of seven people surge toward the exit at a Shoppers Drug Mart in Toronto. Together, they are carrying more than $8,000 worth of merchandise. A member of staff first tries to block the door, then attempts to grab a bag out of one woman’s hands. When the employee follows the group outside, she is hurled back into the camera’s frame, her face hitting the door as she falls to the ground.
Dean Henrico, senior vice-president of asset protection at Loblaw Cos. Ltd. L-T, which owns Shoppers, frowns at the screen as he plays the security footage. “You see how flagrant it is,” he says.
While shoplifting has always existed, retailers across the industry are raising the alarm about a disturbing increase in incidents that are far greater in scale, many of which law enforcement have tied to organized crime. A rising number are turning violent.
In total, Canadian retailers lost $9.1-billion to theft in 2024, the Retail Council of Canada estimates. That’s a significant increase from 2018, when annual losses were closer to $5-billion. And roughly 45 per cent of incidents last year included violence against staff or customers, according to the RCC.
Thefts span many categories, including high-value items such as fragrances and electronics, but also personal care items such as moisturizers, vitamins and even perishable foods, including meat and cheese. Criminals then store stolen goods in warehouses and resell them online to Canadians searching for deals amid an affordability crisis. Far from one-off cases of shoplifting, these incidents can involve thousands or tens of thousands of dollars worth of items in a single theft. Recent high-profile robberies of cases full of butter have shone a light on the variety of products that are now a target.
In addition to financial losses, retailers are becoming increasingly alarmed about threats to customers and staff, who have been assaulted during robberies even when they do not attempt to intervene. Executives say they have seen thieves collide with bystanders, including children, as they flee. Some culprits pose as customers and ask for a display case to be unlocked. They then empty the shelves, sometimes assaulting the employee or threatening them with weapons such as hammers and knives.
“Retailers across the country are experiencing a rise in violent incidents, threats and increasingly aggressive behaviour,” Darrell Jones, long-time president of Pattison Food Group, wrote in an e-mail to The Globe and Mail. “In fact, I have never seen anything like this in my nearly 50 years in the grocery industry.”
The Decibel: Canadian retail’s security crackdown on violent theft
Diane Brisebois, who has been chief executive officer of the Retail Council for nearly 30 years, also said the problem is worse than anything she has seen in her career.
“It has become violent, it has become aggressive,” Ms. Brisebois said. She fields calls every week, she says, from business leaders alarmed by the spike in organized retail crime.
“Most people think, well, it’s someone who is in need; or it’s little Johnny on a dare, stealing whatever,” Ms. Brisebois says. “That has changed completely.”
Security camera footage shows two incidents of theft at Shoppers Drug Mart locations in Thornhill, Ont. (top) and Aurora, Ont.Boris Ruvet-Thebia/Supplied
It used to be that reselling pilfered goods happened on the black market. But with the proliferation of online platforms, the trade in stolen products has moved into the light.
Roger Wilkie, the president of the Ontario Association of Chiefs of Police and deputy chief of Halton Regional Police, has seen this in his own home, when family members show him deals they find on sites such as Amazon or Facebook Marketplace. Stolen products are listed alongside legitimate ones, but offered at a suspicious discount. “That’s probably hot,” he tells loved ones, warning them off the purchase.
Organized crime is “responsible for significant losses across the retail industry,” Amazon Canada spokesperson Octavia Roufogalis wrote in an emailed statement, adding that the company spends more than $1-billion annually to combat fraud and abuse, and regularly requests proof of sourcing from Amazon sellers accused of peddling stolen merchandise. “Amazon has zero tolerance for the sale of stolen goods.”
Amazon has detection systems to spot possible organized retail crime, and the company has referred thousands of “bad actors” to law enforcement, Ms. Roufogalis wrote.
“This is organized crime. It’s theft-to-order,” Deputy Chief Wilkie said in an interview. “There’s someone at the top of the pyramid that’s making a lot of money.”
This was borne out by one investigation in 2022, a three-month probe dubbed Project Kingfisher. Halton police worked with other jurisdictions to trace $2-million in stolen products to a single organized group, who kept the items in storage lockers and a warehouse, and resold them online.
Last year, Manitoba launched a retail theft initiative, with funding for overtime hours for police to increase their presence in Winnipeg neighbourhoods to address violent crime. In the fall, the province made it a permanent program.
But projects such as this one are relatively rare in Canada. In the United States, cities such as Los Angeles set up task forces to combat organized retail thefts. But in many parts of Canada, police don’t have enough staff to dedicate to these issues. “The bandwidth is not there. We are all struggling to put enough boots on the ground to meet our calls for service,” Deputy Chief Wilkie said.
Some companies are advocating for legislative change. The Criminal Code should recognize organized retail crime as a distinct encounter, Loblaw’s Mr. Henrico said. Deputy Chief Wilkie wants specific Crown prosecutors who could deal with organized crime, rather than treating theft charges as “one-offs,” he said.
Inspector Jennifer McKinnon of the Winnipeg Police Service speaks about Manitoba's efforts to curb retail theft, at a press conference in November, 2023.Aaron Vincent Elkaim/The Canadian Press
“I want to be clear that when we talk about retail theft, I’m not advocating for one minute that we should be going after a mom who’s stealing baby formula, or someone who’s stealing food to sustain their life,” Deputy Chief Wilkie said. “It’s the organized pieces that I think we’re really trying to crack down on.”
Retail executives say that, in many cases, offenders who have been arrested for previous thefts are released on bail to await trial, and they then return to the same stores to steal again.
For Canada’s largest retailer, Loblaw, the number of theft suspects intercepted or detained in its stores has risen by 123 per cent in just the past two years. Organized retail crime incidents are now costing the company “hundreds of millions of dollars a year,” Mr. Henrico says.
Retailers know that some Canadians have little sympathy for these mounting losses – particularly following the surge in inflation in recent years, which has stretched many consumers’ ability to afford basic needs. On social media, it is not uncommon for people to advise each other that if they have spotted someone shoplifting, “no you didn’t.”
One retail executive reached for this story was not authorized to speak on the record, but expressed concerns about public backlash for discussing the issue. Even for large companies, this person said, it is a mistake to view the rise in retail thefts as a victimless crime.
“We’ve had people seriously injured, multiple weapons, gunshots, you name it,” the executive said, adding that frontline employees fear for their safety, even as the company has invested heavily in trained security personnel at its stores. “We have managers who are scared, and telling us they don’t want to come back to work.”
Walking the aisles of a Real Canadian Superstore in Toronto, Dean Henrico points to some of the security measures Loblaw has invested in. TV screens hooked up to 130 store security cameras are strategically placed near areas with high incidences of theft, prominently displaying the message “recording in progress” as a deterrent. In the toy section, “spider wraps” attach circular theft sensors to Lego boxes with black wires that checkout staff remove after purchase. Mr. Henrico points to two men walking by, identifying them as plainclothes security guards.
Nearby, Ninja blenders and Nicorette packs sit inside locked cases. Five years ago, very few items would have been locked up, he says. But for “categories where we’re getting hit really, really hard,” Loblaw has made the change.
“I really hope we don’t get to the point that we’re seeing in the U.S., where almost the entire store is locked up,” Mr. Henrico says. “That’s not our goal.”
Many retailers have instituted policies that staff are not to intervene in thefts for their own safety, opting instead for trained security personnel or hiring off-duty police officers in some locations.
Grocer Save-On-Foods, owned by Pattison Food Group, started its in-house security guard program in 2019 to combat rising incidents of theft; the company now employs more than 300 security guards. In Vancouver alone, London Drugs Ltd. has gone from having very few security guards in stores five years ago to having a team of roughly 200 guards.
“There’s a massive growth in the application of security that’s been required – and this is just trying to maintain a baseline and stay similar to where we were,” said Tony Hunt, general manager of loss prevention for London Drugs. “And yet we’ve seen losses over that period of time, still, double.”
For companies that sell security solutions, business is booming.
Loblaw’s Mr. Henrico reviews security footage at a Superstore in Toronto. Loblaw has seen the number of theft suspects intercepted or detained in its stores rise by 123 per cent in just the past two years.Christopher Katsarov/The Globe and Mail
In the small town of Sainte-Clotilde-de-Beauce, south of Quebec City, Bolduc Solution has had to hire more staff to keep up with the growing demand for its security gates – the metal kind that open one way as customers enter a store. The company builds gates for retailers such as Walmart Canada, the Liquor Control Board of Ontario, Home Depot and a variety of grocery stores.
“Five, 10 years ago, when we were talking about gates with other retailers, they would say, ‘No, it’s just for grocery stores.’ They didn’t want to hear about gates,” said Bolduc president Christian Chateauvert. Now, he is beginning to see demand from a wider variety, including some clothing stores and drugstores. In the past three years, sales of gates have nearly doubled.
Bolduc is also working to fortify its products. Retailers have reported thefts in which people threw merchandise to each other over the gates. To combat this, some stores have asked for added plexiglass barriers to make the gates taller. Bolduc is also manufacturing gates with cameras embedded in the posts, designed to capture a straight shot of people’s faces and aid in identification. In some stores, the company installs strobe lights in the ceiling to alert staff to a breach.
California-based Gatekeeper Systems, similarly, has seen more demand for its technology. The company installs wheels on shopping carts that automatically lock up when someone tries to push a cart out of a store without paying. The company’s algorithms analyze the movement of each cart, and if it bypasses a checkout or engages in other behaviour not indicative of a paying shopper, the brakes are triggered. The system can also set off a store’s alarm when that occurs.
“We’re seeing much faster adoption in recent years by mass merchants as well as DIY” (hardware retailers), said Gatekeeper CEO Robert Harling. Those types of retailers did not consider using the technology in the past, he added. “The growing concerns around employee safety and shopper safety have really driven them to accelerate their adoption.”
Asset Protection Representative Dante Babaei monitors shoppers' activity from the security office, as staff help customers in the self check out area of a Superstore in Toronto.Christopher Katsarov/The Globe and Mail
Even some technologies more associated with law enforcement are now making their way into stores. For example, Loblaw is currently running a pilot program in four locations in Western Canada, where security staff are wearing body cameras. The hope is that by having such devices visible, it will deter and decrease violence in stores, Mr. Henrico said. Loblaw will evaluate the results of the pilot before deciding whether to distribute the cameras to more locations in Canada.
“It’s still in the early stages, but the early results are encouraging,” Mr. Henrico said.
Arizona-based Axon Enterprise Inc. manufactures the cameras, and sells them mostly to police forces, but it has been seeing more demand from private companies, including retailers.
“Relatively, it’s a small part of the business, but growing really fast,” said Paul Strozier, senior director of enterprise for Axon. In Canada, some small retailers have been using the cameras for about a year, he added, and there is a wave of additional retailers looking into it now.
“It is more than just capturing the incident, but it does act as a deterrent and a de-escalation tool,” said Vishal Dhir, Axon’s senior vice-president of the Commonwealth and the Americas, who leads the company’s presence in Canada.
But as retailers increase their spending on measures to fight thefts, there is also a concern that it could affect consumers – not only in terms of safety in public retail spaces, but also in the impact the increased investment could have on prices.
“People are seeing rising costs because of inflation, and every time there is more crime that starts to emerge, it creates more costs that ultimately have to be borne by all of us,” Mr. Hunt of London Drugs said.
London Drugs president Clint Mahlman says the company has no plans to close stores due to escalating violence and theft, though the issue has reached a 'crisis point' for Canadian retailers.Nono Shen/The Canadian Press
“It was very coincidental that you reached out,” Dave Gerber said, speaking from his Home Hardware store in Plattsville, Ont. In the span of just a few days, between agreeing to an interview with The Globe and picking up the phone, the store suffered a major break-in. Security cameras were jammed, windows smashed, and an estimated $5,000 worth of Milwaukee and DeWalt tools were taken in the early morning hours.
Mr. Gerber, the dealer-owner, had already seen a rise in incidents during the day – he had instituted a ban on backpacks in the store – but this was the largest theft to date.
“We’re a very small store,” he said. Surveying the damage, he estimated he would have to spend $25,000 to $30,000 to put on new doors and add security measures such as steel grates. “We just don’t make that much, to have to spend all that.”
When it comes to the stolen items, his insurance coverage is unlikely to be any help. The store has a $5,000 deductible, Mr. Gerber explained. To prevent his insurance premiums from going up, he does not expect to file a claim.
He is not alone. In a survey of 1,666 small business owners conducted last year by the Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB), only 15 per cent reported always filing insurance claims, and a concern about increases to premiums was the number one reason provided.
Small businesses across Canada are reporting that crime is an increasing problem for them: 45 per cent of those surveyed said they were directly impacted by crime and community safety issues in 2024, a significant jump from just 24 per cent who reported the same in another survey the previous year. Two-thirds are, like Mr. Gerber, spending more on security measures, including window bars, cameras and security guards.
Businesses are also attempting to deal with a growing problem of repeat, chronic offenders, Mr. Hunt of London Drugs said. “We’ve seen just a flurry of activity where people are coming in and just recommitting the same crimes over and over again.” Large-scale thefts are accompanied by threats and abuse toward staff, he said. “We know that our people are afraid of these situations.”
Business owners also recognize, however, that crime is a societal issue that cannot be addressed through law enforcement alone. In a 2023 survey of more than 2,000 owners, the CFIB found 83 per cent agreed that provincial governments “should prioritize action on poverty reduction, affordable housing and mental health issues.”
At the federal level, 92 per cent said Ottawa “should improve its handling of repeat offenders (e.g., by revising bail rules or by better connecting vulnerable individuals to the services they need).”
To address the problem requires looking beyond individual offenders, Loblaw’s Mr. Henrico said.
“Shoplifting is not the problem. It is organized retail crime, with a degree of sophistication and violence that retailers throughout Canada and North America are not prepared to face.”