ICSA calls on the government to crack down on skyrocketing theft and violence targeting convenience stores across Canada
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Every independent convenience store in Canada carries a risk that most retail businesses do not. We are open late, often overnight. We frequently operate with a single employee on shift. We handle cash, and we stock high-value age-restricted products that can be resold in minutes. In many neighbourhoods and small towns, we are the only business with the lights on at 2 a.m.
That combination makes our stores a target of violent criminals. Our staff are being robbed at gunpoint, assaulted over a bag of merchandise, and endangered by drivers recklessly pulling away from the pump after stealing fuel. These are life-altering violent crimes against working people, and the response from the government has been inadequate.
The Retail Council of Canada estimates that Canadian retailers lost roughly $9.1 billion to theft in 2024, close to double the level of a decade earlier. About 45% of organized retail crime incidents that year involved violence against staff or customers. Statistics Canada’s most recent complete national figures show police-reported shoplifting continuing to rise through 2024.
Those national numbers describe something our members already know: the person walking out with stolen product is increasingly willing to threaten or assault the employee who notices.
Armed robberies at convenience stores and gas stations are happening far too often in Canada. In a single recent stretch, police investigated two gunpoint robberies at Victoria gas stations less than half an hour apart, an armed robbery at a Saskatoon convenience store, and a robbery in Ottawa where a man assaulted a staff member after being refused.
Each of these incidents involved an ordinary person earning an hourly wage. Many were working alone. The risk is highest overnight, which is exactly when stores are least able to afford a second employee and when police response times are longest.
Fuel theft is routinely treated as a property crime, but it regularly becomes a violent one, because an attendant who tries to stop a driver is standing beside a vehicle that is already moving. In 2012, an Ontario gas station attendant was tragically killed during one of these thefts.
The volume is substantial. Peel’s police chief estimated that his service responded to roughly 21,000 gas-and-dash drive-offs over five years, and York Region police were estimated to have spent 7,000 hours responding to and investigating fuel thefts.
Fuel theft has also escalated. In Alberta, RCMP are now investigating high-volume diesel thefts, with officers recommending that stations install anti-siphoning devices in their ground tanks. Our members are being asked to buy their own security hardware to fend off organized fuel crime.
Enact mandatory prepayment requirements for fuel in provinces that lack them, as police associations and retailer groups have urged for years.
Treat assaults on retail and service workers as a clear aggravating factor at sentencing, and ensure the new retail theft provisions are actually applied.
Fund police capacity to respond to and follow up on retail crime, including repeat-offender enforcement.
Track retail crime properly, with national data that distinguishes violent incidents against retail workers rather than burying them in general theft statistics.
Create an online retail crime reporting portal with a commitment that reports are reviewed and logged, not just filed.
Create a small business security grant or tax credit so independent owners are not financing their own safety infrastructure alone.
