Hardware stores in Quebec are complaining of an increase in shoplifting in their establishments, particularly due to inflation.
• Also read: They steal because the prices are too high
• Also read: Shoplifting explodes in Quebec with inflation
More than two-thirds (68%) of members of the Quebec Association of Hardware and Building Materials (AQMAT) said in a survey conducted earlier in March that they have seen an increase in thefts over the past two years.
Richard Darveau, President of AQMAT, makes a direct connection to consumer price increases.
“Inflation is playing. Also the lack of staff. The employee-customer ratio is lower than before. evil people […] know that there are fewer employees to control. It puts extra pressure,” he said in an interview on the JE program, which will be shown on TVA tonight at 9:30 p.m.
AQMAT represents 1,000 dealers, distributors and manufacturers across the province.
Our team went to one of them, a RONA-affiliated hardware store in the Lachine neighborhood of Montreal, to see the extent of the problem.
“There’s theft here every day,” complains deputy manager Hugo Chartier, who showed us empty packaging the day before our visit.
“It’s an $85 showerhead. Someone stole 2,” he said.
Masked and hooded
The store now does 3 inventories per year instead of just one to keep track.
“Last year we had $60,000 stolen out of $8.5 million in sales,” specifies Mr. Chartier.
Even though his shop already has several surveillance cameras installed, that doesn’t deter all the thieves who have arrived masked and cloaked since the pandemic.
“Two years ago, when someone came into the store like that, I said to them: You can’t go into a store like that. You look like a bank robber. Now it’s a paradise for thieves! says Mr. Chartier and shows us surveillance videos.
Internet, paradise for obfuscation
Thieves have also found a haven on the internet to sell stolen goods, with sites like Marketplace (linked to Facebook) or Kijiji, Richard Darveau denounces.
“Thanks to these platforms, people can resell anonymously and extremely efficiently within an hour [les fruits de] their theft from the store,” says Mr. Darveau.
The president of AQMAT would like Facebook to warn its users more clearly that if they buy stolen goods on the platform, they could be complicit in a crime in the eyes of the law.
Thieves are hard to blame
Screenshot of the broadcast JE
Below left we see a thief who has put an $800 ceramic cutter in his pocket at the RONA store in Lachine.
Despite the sums spent on store security, there is no guarantee that the thief will be prosecuted.
This is the case of a man we see walking around in front of security cameras at the RONA hardware store in Lachine.
He stuffed an $800 ceramic cutter in his pocket in a blind spot unobscured by cameras before fleeing without pay. The police found him but immediately released him.
Screenshot of the broadcast JE
The thief ran away.
“It really needs concrete evidence. We really need to see him take the item, walk out with it without paying, and then find it with the same item,” explains Hugo Chartier, deputy head of the house.
Modernize labeling
One of the solutions to overcoming obscurity is to modernize the labeling of items as soon as they’re made and identify the companies that sell them, believes Richard Darveau of the Quebec Association of Hardware and Building Materials.
“We’re still working with a technology that was developed in 1949 and became widespread in the 1970s, known as barcodes. If there are 50 circular saws in 10 different stores, it’s the same code”.
Hardware stores will also be asking the Quebec government to help them tackle shoplifting in the coming weeks.
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