NRA-ILA | The Great Canadian Gun Grab – The End is Near?

As we noted in a previous alert, in early December Canada’s governing Liberal Party announced 324 more models and “variants” of firearms had been added to the list of banned “military grade assault weapons” initially reclassified as “prohibited” in 2020. The latest list includes firearms that were previously classified as “non-restricted” and “restricted.” As was the case with firearms covered by the 2020 gun ban, this ban took effect immediately; owners of the firearms may continue to possess (but not use) their lawfully-acquired property until the amnesty period expires on October 30, 2025, at which point further possession or use risks criminal liability.  This ban and confiscation list, as described by the Canadian gun rights news source TheGunBlog.ca, represents “one of the biggest crackdowns against honest citizens by any democracy in history, outside of war.”     

When this latest ban was introduced, Dominic LeBlanc, the-then Minister of Public Safety responsible for overseeing the implementation of the ban and so-called “buyback,” advised that the first phase of the mandatory confiscation, targeting firearm businesses, was underway. In a surprising development, though, the commercial confiscation/compensation phase now has a much accelerated deadline. Rather than the expiry of the amnesty in October, a new Public Safety Canada website dated December 11, 2024 states that “[a]ll claims must be submitted through your account by April 30, 2025 to receive compensation.”

The business must arrange for shipping the “firearms, devices, parts and components” using an “approved carrier.” Even though Canadian postal officials had previously declined to support the use of Canada Post as a means of collecting banned guns due to internal safety and security concerns, the government includes “ship by post” as an acceptable way of surrendering a business’s guns and other banned inventory. Once the shipment has been received at the specified facility, the business must still wait up to 45 business days for payment to be issued, but only if “all required validations are successfully completed, and no additional review is required.” (One issue, of course, is whether such additional reviews and validations will push claimants outside of the April 30 compensation window.)

According to Public Safety Canada, a business may instead opt to permanently deactivate the firearms, but this must be done by a “business authorized to perform firearm deactivations,” and the compensation available is a “flat rate fee per firearm of $400” ($700 for guns with a muzzle energy greater than 10,000 Joules, or a bore diameter of 20 mm or greater). However, lower receivers, parts and components of prohibited firearms “are not eligible for deactivation.” The two other available options are to export the business’ banned firearms, devices, parts and components “abroad to a legitimate customer” using an export permit, or return the guns, parts or components to the appropriate manufacturer. In both of these scenarios, though, the business will not qualify for government compensation, regardless of whether this forced disposition results in a financial loss.

The business remains responsible for ensuring that all federal and provincial laws that “may impact participation in the program” are followed, although there’s a statement that the government’s “amnesty order and federal shipping regulations protect[] businesses, couriers and postal services from criminal liability during the delivery of prohibited firearms and devices for destruction until October 30, 2025.”

Another government website publishes the compensation amounts that dealers and businesses are eligible to claim (including compensation for “missile launchers,” “rocket launchers,” and recoilless rifles). Inexplicably (but entirely in keeping with the shambolic way the government has implemented this pointless gun control measure), the compensation schedule does not include the latest batch of banned guns and devices. “Newly prohibited makes and models of firearms announced on December 5, 2024 will be added to the program and eligible for compensation in early 2025.”

The compensation amounts for the mandatory confiscation affecting individual, non-business owners (a.k.a. “Phase 2”) have not been published. Public Safety Canada only notes that  “[m]ore information on the compensation model for individuals will be provided at a later date.” It’s unknown whether comparable amounts and disposition options will be offered to individual gun owners.

TheGunBlog.ca reports that the Liberal government has finally provided an updated public estimate of what it expects to spend on compensation for affected gun owners. A 2024 Fall Economic Statement, dated December 16 and released by the federal Department of Finance, states that the government “proposes to provide $597.9 million over three years, starting in 2024-25, to Public Safety Canada and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to safely remove prohibited firearms from communities and fairly compensate assault-style firearms owners.”

Significantly, this amount is far, far below the government’s own estimate four years ago that pegged the costs of the mandatory confiscation program at CD$1.8 billion. The reason for this deviation is unclear, although one guess is that the government is trying to restrict the disclosed cost estimate to the initially promised amount of between CD$400-600 million. As of early last year, the government acknowledged some CD$42 million had already been spent on the program, which would put the spending, actual and estimated, over the CD$600 million price tag.

Timing is another issue. Last September, Dominic LeBlanc assured Canadians that the existing “expenditures were precisely so that we can meet the obligations we made to Canadians in terms of those timelines, and I’m not pessimistic at all” regarding “our ability to effectively deliver that program,” including, presumably, compliance with the deadline set by the amnesty. The 2024 Fall Economic Statement, though, mentions the spending being phased “over three years, starting in 2024-25,” completely at odds with the expiry of the amnesty period this fall. The amnesty date has already been pushed back twice: originally set to expire on April 30, 2022, it was later extended to October 30, 2023, and again to the current date of October 30, 2025, following the next federal election. This three-year reference suggests the Liberals may be anxious to delay the implementation of the Phase 2 individual confiscations until after the election, given the very toxic optics of hunters, farmers, ranchers, veterans and other honest Canadians surrendering their lawfully acquired property to the government in the months leading up to the vote. 

In any event, Dominic LeBlanc is no longer the government minister responsible for overseeing the gun confiscation program, having moved on to a new position as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s finance minister, replacing Chrystia Freeland. Freeland, the former deputy prime minister and finance minister, abruptly resigned on December 16, on the same day that another of Trudeau’s ministers was announcing his own departure from cabinet. Trudeau has since chosen David McGuinty (Ottawa South) as the new Minister of Public Safety and appointed Liberal MP Rachel Bendayan (Outremont) as his associate minister. McGuinty (as TheGunBlog.ca notes) becomes the fifth public safety minister to be saddled with the responsibility for implementing Trudeau’s gun control laws and confiscation program. While McGuinty doesn’t appear to have a background in law enforcement or firearms, Bendayan has long been a gun control proponent, and most recently appeared along with LeBlanc as the Liberal’s spokesperson at the December 5 press conference introducing the expanded list of prohibited firearm models and variants now liable to government confiscation.

McGuinty’s predecessor LeBlanc clocked less than five months in the Public Safety position, and current indications point to a brief tenure for not just McGuinty, but for Trudeau and his government as well. Canada’s next federal election must be held on or before October 20, although a non-confidence motion could trigger an earlier election if most members of Canada’s parliament vote in favor of it. As of late December, all three of the main opposition parties in Parliament (Conservative Party, Bloc Québécois, and notably, the New Democratic Party, which has propped up Trudeau’s Liberal minority government in the past) were expressing support for a no-confidence vote. In a parallel development, several MPs within Trudeau’s own party were publicly calling for him to step down as the Liberal Party leader.

This disaffection reflects the mood across the country, with a Dec. 30 opinion poll showing the Liberal Party’s approval among Canadian voters has crashed to unprecedented levels. Just 16% of decided and leaning voters favor the party, “quite possibly the lowest vote intention the Liberals have ever received in the modern era.” Likewise, approval of Prime Minister Trudeau “now plummets to an all-time nadir of 22 per cent,” with almost “half (46%) of Canadians and three-in-five (59%) current Liberal supporters say[ing] it’s time for him to step aside.” Scott Reid, a Canadian political analyst and commentator, sums up the situation: “the writing is on the wall” for Trudeau. “It’s on the ceiling, it’s on the carpet, it’s everywhere. And the writing’s quickly becoming on the face of every single Liberal across the country, the prime minister can’t stay.”

If Trudeau’s latest round of gun criminalization was meant to persuade Canadians that, contrary to the contemptuous approach to date, the “government respects and will not infringe upon the rights of lawful gun owners and recognizes the fundamental importance of firearms … to the way of life for many rural Canadians, farmers, and Indigenous hunters” (to quote the 2024 Fall Economic Statement), it has failed dismally. For Canadians who aren’t themselves gun owners, they need only consult the crime statistics to discover whether clamping down on the good and decent people that make up the lawful firearms community is anything more than a “hollow display of security.”   

Hopefully, better days lie ahead. The Canadian Shooting Sports Association notes that “the incoming Conservative government has publicly stated they will reverse all of Trudeau’s gun control measures that target our community,” and reminds responsible gun owners that, in the meantime, surrendering their prohibited firearms is still voluntary until the amnesty expires.

Time will tell, but the Canadian Liberal Party’s era of misguided, ineffective, and expensive gun control may finally be drawing to a close.