Its kind of scary that some know of this method to steal the GEC for selling to metal recyclers.
A home owner or a rental unit occupant may not even noticed that the Grounding system has been tampered with.
Doug,
Does Canada use a GEC tied in with the Supply Neutral?
This can often mean that the Neutral will end up carrying Fault current where the GEC is not present.
This can start fires where there is a bad connection in the Neutral system, might not be your house, but could be next door or down the street, all that fault current wants to do is get to ground with the least amount of work done.
Like-wise, you never disconnect a GEC without very good reason and you should be wearing hot gloves when doing so.
You never know what is happening down the street.
A clamp-meter will often tell you though
