NRA-ILA | Canada’s Confiscation Scheme – A Lesson for America

Vice President and Democrat presidential candidate Kamala Harris has, in the past, been forthcoming about her support of gun confiscation and mandatory “buybacks” (here and here), and there’s little reason to believe that she has changed her values. Should she persist in envisioning a future of government-mandated gun seizures from responsible Americans, Harris would do well to examine just how successful that experience has been in Canada, a country with far fewer guns and gun owners.       

It has been six years since Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau instructed his ministers to examine a “full ban on handguns and assault weapons” and more than four years after Trudeau announced his ban and mandatory confiscation program of so-called “assault weapons.” As we’ve previously noted, this mandate – despite being depicted by its proponents in terms of the utmost necessity and urgency – seems stuck at the conceptual stage.

Canadian gun rights site TheGunBlog.ca recently wrote about the Liberal government’s own confirmation that it apparently has no idea of what it’s doing.

In May, a conservative Member of Parliament, Shelby Kramp-Neuman (Hastings-Lennox and Addington, Ontario), formally asked the federal Department of Public Safety, the department responsible for overseeing the ban and “buyback” program, twelve questions about the program.

Her questions included the start date that the gun seizures are expected to begin, how the program would be implemented once the amnesty period expires, which government agencies, departments and personnel will be called upon to execute the program, the projected cost of the combined ban and confiscation program, the proof the government acted on that shows the banned firearms “are statistically more likely to be used in incidents of violent crime,” and why the government opted to impose the ban and confiscation law through Orders-in-Council rather than going through Parliament. She also asked how many guns have been stolen from federal departments, agencies and personnel since January 1, 2016, and how many have since been recovered. These questions don’t appear especially difficult, given the program’s relatively imminent timeframe (the latest amnesty expires in 13 months).  

This month, the government responded.

Rather than substantive information on the issues that Ms. Kramp-Neuman raised, the document (Sessional Paper 8555-441-2728, Sept. 16, 2024) offers background generalities without direct (or even any) answers. On the confiscation start date, the document has nothing more definite than implementation “will occur in two phases. The business phase (Phase 1) would be launched in 2024, followed by the individual phase (Phase 2) soon after.” There isn’t any actual supporting evidence given for the ban, although the document offers a vague (also unsubstantiated) prediction as to the law’s effect: decreases in violent crime involving the guns that have been banned since May 1, 2020 “are expected to be observable within five to ten years following the end of the Program and amnesty period.”

The only response that contains any level of detail is an annual listing of guns that have been stolen from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police between January 2016 and May 2024, in response to the question on the number of guns stolen from all government departments, agencies and personnel.

The remaining questions are disposed of through a blanket disclaimer: “At this time, the Government is not able to provide additional answers as the questions being posed touch upon issues of Program design that are still being developed.”

In other words, the implementation plan, if there is one, is still up in the air. Why else use prospective language to describe a phase that “would be launched in 2024,” when we are three months out from the end of the year? As guidance, the government’s response isn’t any more useful than the outdated “Firearms Buyback Program Overview” still being posted at the Public Safety Canada website.  

What the gun ban and confiscation scheme has accomplished is the villainization of responsible gun owners, outlawed legitimately acquired property, and wasted taxpayer dollars on an epic scale (the “cost-effective program” has burned through at least C$67M to date), all while crime rates under Trudeau’s Liberal government continue to rise.

The violent crime rate in Canada, which was in a steady decline as of 2002, has been climbing since Trudeau took office in 2015, and the latest federal government statistics on firearm-related violent crime in Canada reveal a similar trend. From 2009 to 2013, the rate of firearm-related violent crime in Canada “saw a relatively significant drop of 30%,” but the rate has been rising since. Although Trudeau’s 2020 gun ban immediately prohibited the use, transport and transfer of the firearms on the banned list, in 2022 the rate of firearm-related violent crime increased by 8.9% over the previous year, the “highest rate recorded since comparable data were first collected in 2009.”

Pressed last week to account for the program’s expenditures, federal Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc hastened to tell reporters that the millions of dollars spent were “precisely so that we can meet the obligations we made to Canadians in terms of [the confiscation] timelines,” that everything is “very much on track,” and that he’s “not pessimistic about our ability to effectively deliver that program.”

The Kamala Harris campaign likes to say “we’re not looking back” and “let’s turn the page,” which work just as well to describe where the Liberal government appears to be regarding the progress of its unjustified, unmanageable and wildly expensive ban and buyback. In the words of TheGunBlog.ca, they have “designed it to fail by pushing their confiscation deadline until 30 October 2025, after the next [federal] election.” By then, current polling shows “the Liberal Party scraping such new lows of unpopularity that they could conceivably be thrown to an unprecedented fourth place in a future House of Commons.” Indeed, one forecaster’s election modeling suggests “not a single Liberal riding would remain either in the North or Western Canada,” jurisdictions which have steadfastly opposed Trudeau’s gun ban and confiscation law. 

One western province has just made its rejection of the federal government’s anti-gun stance still more explicit. On September 24, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith and her United Conservative Party (UCP) announced proposed amendments to the provincial bill of rights law – “an important step forward for our province in protecting the rights and freedoms that are central to our identity as Albertans.” The changes will include specific protection for gun owners, “to make clear that in Alberta, we respect the right of individuals to legally acquire, keep, and safely use firearms. For many Albertans, firearms are critical to their livelihood and way of life.” Smith added that it was her personal feeling that “law-abiding firearms owners have been unfairly targeted by our federal government for decades, and it is my hope that these amendments will better protect the rights of our farmers, ranchers, hunters and sports enthusiasts.”

Once passed, the amendment can’t change federal firearm laws, but will ensure that provincial laws and policies align with the listed rights and freedoms; it may give Alberta “more administrative and legislative tools to block the current Liberal confiscations” and “encourage other provinces to follow Alberta’s lead.” The message, though, is clear: Trudeau and his government represent notions of freedom that an increasing number of Canadians simply don’t share.