ORC - does it exist in Canada? Or is it that the newspapers just don't pick it up? We've certainly heard of a number of ORC cases but rarely do we see anything in the newspapers about the subject. Even when surveys are released in the States, Canadian newspapers just don't pick them up. A number of senior LP executives have mentioned them to us here at the Daily over the years but they never get any press.At the Daily we spend countless hours scoring the papers and the net looking for the articles but rarely see them. Certainly we see the counterfeit cases, ID theft cases, and credit card/debit card cases but rarely the ORC or fencing case. So we at the Daily would like to ask the Canadian LP community - Does it exist there and why doesn't your press pick them up? Any takers?
 

A READER'S RESPONSE TO OUR FRIDAY ARTICLE--
 

Submitted by Roy Franco, Regional Loss Prevention Manager, Toysrus Canada

I can tell you from personal experience ORC is alive and well in Canada. I cover part of Ontario, all of Quebec, and the Atlantic provinces for Toysrus. We’re hit regularly by ORC, however there is no mention of this anywhere in the Canadian media. It is not on their radar. We, as a country, still have not learned the seriousness of the problem. Most of the public and media still think that shoplifters are the kids or individual who shoplift for personal use or it’s just the opportunist. The problem isn’t at the same level as the US, but that maybe because of more targets in the US, nobody has looked at it on a per capita basis. I can say that the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation did have a documentary last year entitled "The Secret World of Shoplifting" which was mainly focused on ORC. However, they mostly went to the US to do interviews and get data so they did not present an accurate picture of what is happening in Canada.

As for the police well they treat these as theft under $5000.00 or theft over $5000.00. They’re not compiled together as ORC, but rather as random thefts in different retail locations. There is no specific mention of this type of crime in the Canadian Criminal Code and there aren’t any amendments on the horizon.