Canada, a bit more liberal than the US, probably has plenty of cities with such policies in place too. Yet, no crime wave there. These waves were a result of Kia's choices, and quite obviously so.
We're not talking about car theft in general, but about the specific crime waves that occurred after the rollout of the less than secure Kias in the US and the Kias with the proper security measures in Canada.
There's no Kia-specific crime wave in Canada as far as I know (I live there). But there's absolutely a general crime wave of car thefts in Canada, and it's quite plausibly tied to recent policy choices. Of course the effect of policy is going to be additive to the effect of blunders like Kia's. But there's good reason to think it has enough impact on its own to be worth discussing.
I'm kind curious, did Canada have the same spike in the "knockout game" that the US did?
If it did, that would point to a US and Canada crime trend correlation. If not, then you can't just say that the one static variable, city/county level policy and the independent variable, immobilizers, are the only factors.
You have different criminal populations, societal values, amounts of government aid, rehabilitation programs, etc that all play into the analysis.
