Opposition leader in the Senate criticized the plan, which has cost $67 million so far without buying one gun. Public Safety Canada says the plan is on track.
Gun supporters of the Canadian Coalition for Firearm Rights on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Sept. 12, 2020. Lars Hagberg/AFP via Getty Images
CALGARY, Canada—On May 1, 2020, the Canadian government outlawed 1,500 types of semiautomatic rifles, effectively banned handguns by attrition, and announced a firearms buyback program to take possession of the newly-banned guns.
The action was the federal government’s response to a mass shooting in Nova Scotia in which 22 people were killed over April 18-19, 2020.
The killer, dressed as a Royal Canadian Mounted Police officer and driving a car rigged to look like a patrol car, used an AR-style rifle smuggled into Canada from the United States.
Four years later, as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal Party struggles to keep control in Parliament, both sides of the debate anticipate the possible end of the program even before the first gun has been surrendered.
One gun control activist has criticized the buyback program as too weak.
Nathalie Provost is the spokesperson for PolyRemembers, a group formed after the Dec. 6, 1989, mass shooting at the Polytechnique engineering school in Montreal that killed 14.
Provost, a survivor of that crime, did not respond to The Epoch Times’ request for comment.
In a Sept. 11 press release, she called on the government to eliminate exemptions to the ban, accelerate completion of the buyback, and close loopholes in the law.
“Even the mandatory buyback program … will lose all of its meaning if current [gun] owners … can simply take the money from the buyback to purchase [guns] that remain legal or new models introduced … by manufacturers seeking to increase their sales and profits,” Provost wrote.
Under the program, certain semiautomatic rifles, so-called assault weapons, were banned.
Rifles such as the AR-15, AK-47, and similar types can no longer be bought, sold, imported, or even transported in Canada. The plan calls for owners of the now-illegal guns to sell them to the federal government.
The government established a two-year amnesty period during which owners must securely store their prohibited firearms until the logistics of the buyback program are worked out.
In 2022, the amnesty period was extended to October 2025.
James Bachynsky, president of the Calgary Shooting Center since 2011, says the Nova Scotia shooting was simply used as an excuse for the Liberal Party to institute a ban it wanted all along.
Bachynsky said the ban would not have prevented the killings in Nova Scotia.
He pointed out that the killer had violated several laws before he fired his first shot. From smuggling guns into the country to impersonating a police officer, the shooter could have been charged with a crime without ever putting his finger on a trigger, he said.
“The government wanted to be seen to be doing something. They introduced this [Order in Council], banned all these guns, and then the investigation determined that all [the killer’s] guns had been smuggled in over the U.S. [border] anyway,” Bachynsky told The Epoch Times.
James Bachynsky, president of the Calgary Shooting Center, talks about how a ban on semiautomatic rifles in Canada has impacted his business, in Calgary, Alberta, on Aug. 29, 2024. Michael Clemente/The Epoch Times
Brian Kent agrees. He owns Proline Shooters II in Calgary and has been in the firearms business for 42 years. He said restricting legal gun ownership is the easiest way for the government to give the impression that it is doing something.
Kent says he believes the “government wants to do away with all firearms, and we’re low hanging fruit and we’re easy to pick on.”
During a Sept. 19 meeting, Dominic LeBlanc, Minister for Public Safety, Democratic Institutions, and Intergovernmental Affairs, denied these claims when questioned by Conservative Sen. Yonah Martin.
“This program in no way targets sports persons, or indigenous persons or persons who hunt for sustenance or who practice a sport; this is designed to get military weapons off the streets,” LeBlanc said.
But Kent is not convinced.
He said officials use terms like “assault weapons,” “military weapons,” and “weapons of war,” to alarm and confuse their constituents. The difference between the banned guns and legal guns is a matter of form rather than function, he said.
“There’s no difference between a [prohibited] AR-15 system and a [legal] Remington 742 semiautomatic rifle. There’s no difference in the function,” Kent told The Epoch Times. “The AR-15 looks dangerous and military and ‘oh my goodness, we’re going to all die.’ There’s no actual functioning difference between the two firearms.”
Bachynsky said that as a firearms dealer, he keeps track of changes in the gun laws. He said the buyback program is confusing. According to Bachynsky, the changes could catch some gun owners unaware.
The list of prohibited rifles has grown from 1,500 to almost 2,000 over the past four years. This means that rifles that were legal when the list was written in 2020 may no longer be allowed.
“But if you own any kind of semiautomatic rifle now, or even a hunting rifle, you need to check [the restricted firearms list] regularly to see whether it’s become prohibited,” Bachynsky told The Epoch Times.
Brian Kent, owner of Proline Shooters II, speaks to The Epoch Times in his store in Calgary, Canada, on Aug. 29, 2024. Michael Clements/The Epoch Times
The program is divided into two phases. In the first phase, gun stores will sell to the government any stock they haven’t been able to export or sell before the amnesty period ends. In the second phase, individual owners will sell their prohibited guns to the government.
In each case the price will be determined by a government estimate, not the amount the store or owner paid.
As of Sept. 25, the Public Safety Canada website had no details on how or when either phase would begin.
“More information on the methods affected firearms businesses can use to turn in their inventory and how they can participate in the program will be provided at a later date,” the Public Safety Canada website reads.
In December 2023, the government enacted Bill C-21, which codified the plan’s prohibition on the sale or transfer of handguns.
Current handgun owners can transport their handguns to shoot on approved firing ranges. But they cannot sell or give them to anyone. When current handgun owners die, their guns must be handed over to the government.
The Liberal Party has been able to advance its agenda through an agreement with the New Democratic Party (NDP). However, on Sept. 4, the NDP backed out of the agreement.
Donald Plett, the Conservative Opposition leader in the Senate, criticized the program on social media as a “$67 million boondoggle.” Plett is focusing on the spending side of the buyback plan in an effort to stop it.
“Sixty-seven million is an incredible, shocking amount of money to spend on a program that doesn’t yet exist, which ultimately targets licensed, trained, law-abiding gun owners and not criminals,” Plett posted on X.
LeBlanc defends the spending, which he says is financing systems that are part of the government’s overall crime reduction plan.
“[The buyback program] was a campaign commitment that we made. We recognized that the taxpayers’ money needed to be expended judiciously, and that’s exactly what we’re going to do,” LeBlanc said.
The owner of a gun shop shows a customer a Ruger GP100 Magnum 357 in Ottawa, Canada, on June 3, 2022. Dave Chan/AFP via Getty Images
Officials in the largely rural provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan have voiced opposition to the plan.
Alberta Premier Danielle Smith announced plans to amend the province’s bill of rights to, among other things, protect the rights of Albertans to own and use firearms, in a Sept. 24 post on X.
She said gun rights are an important part of the history and culture of Alberta.
“I personally feel that law-abiding firearms owners have been unfairly targeted by our federal government for decades,” she said.
Teri Bryant, Alberta’s chief firearms officer, said the buyback program is federal law and will be implemented unless the federal government changes course. But like Smith, Bryant says there are things provincial officials can do.
“We cannot refuse a federal law, but that doesn’t mean that we have to do anything to actively cooperate with that law either,” Bryant told The Epoch Times.
Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs, Infrastructure, and Communities Dominic LeBlanc speaks during a press conference in Ottawa, Canada, on Oct. 26, 2021. Lars Hagberg/AFP via Getty Images
The Alberta Firearms Act went into effect on March 28, 2023. It prohibits the use of provincial resources for confiscation. It also limits the types of agreements local law enforcement can enter into with federal officials and expands the chief firearms officer’s responsibilities and authority within the province.
“So, for example, most of the RCMP officers in the province of Alberta are provincially funded. So if the province says … we don’t want provincial resources to be used to implement this system, then that is a fairly significant obstacle,” Bryant said.
“If they really wanted to do it, they could come up with people, but then they would have to comply with our Alberta Firearms Act that empowers me to license anybody who’s involved in that.”
Bryant said the divide between gun owners and the government has more to do with culture than with guns or crime. Along those lines, she said she spends much of her time traveling the province to talk with gun owners about the law.
She also spends time in Ottawa talking with federal officials about Albertans’ concerns.
Lawmakers in Ottawa and residents in rural Alberta are wary of one another, she said, and replacing that wariness with trust might be a better first step.
“In this case, you’re going to regulate a group of people. You have to have credibility with those people, and you have to have their trust. That’s an essential element,” Bryant said.
Bryant said about 10 percent of the population in Canada owns at least one gun.