Canada has so far spent $42 million on gun grab that doesn’t exist yet

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OTTAWA — Four years after the Trudeau Liberals announced sweeping changes to Canada’s gun laws, the government has so far spent $42 million on a federal firearms confiscation program that doesn’t yet exist.

In a response to an order paper question filed by Sen. Don Plett in September, Public Safety Canada revealed that $41,904,556 has been spent so far on the government’s “firearms buyback program,” and that 60 department employees are working on the project. 

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“This is a boondoggle, and it hasn’t even begun,” Plett said Friday during the Senate question period, directing his question at government representative Sen. Marc Gold.

“How can your government have spent $42 million on this, when not a single firearm has been bought back?”

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As well, the documents reveal that IBM has been awarded a $2.27-million contract to develop, design and implement the program.

That figure is nearly double what that contract was worth when Public Safety Canada announced the firm’s involvement in the program in 2020.

In the documents, the RCMP say it is managing a team of 15 full-time employees devoted to the gun grab. 

As well, Service Canada has assigned two employees to the program, and a response from Public Services and Procurement Canada said it has devoted “the equivalent of 5.825 full-time employees” to the project.

Last April, the federal government commenced the first phase of the program by entering into a $700,000 agreement with the Canadian Sporting Arms and Ammunition Association to confiscate so-called “assault rifles” from retailers. 

That program is expected to start later this year. 

Work on phase two, which involves confiscating legally purchased firearms from their licensed owners, began earlier this year.

The government issued an invitation to qualify earlier this year, seeking vendors interested in collecting and destroying the over 1,500 gun models summarily banned by the federal government under the May 1, 2020 order-in-council. 

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That order-in-council instantly reclassified around 1,500 popular firearm models to prohibited status, including so-called “military-style” or “assault” firearms.

Initially meant to happen by April 2022, amnesty for licensed owners was extended until Oct. 23, 2023, and again until 2025.

The government estimates that between 10,000 and 15,000 newly prohibited firearms are in the hands of Canadian businesses, and anywhere between 125,000 to 200,000 are owned by licensed individuals. 

“These estimates could vary as the number of affected non-restricted firearms is unknown,” the invitation remarked. 

As many crime guns are committed with prohibited firearms smuggled into Canada from the United States — and therefore unlawful for Canadian licence-holders to own — critics say the government is preoccupying itself with an expensive program whose impact on Canada’s crime epidemic will be negligible.

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National Post contacted Public Safety Canada for comment.

Firearms policy expert Tim Thurley said that with such an unprecedented program, there’s no question it will be expensive.

“Consider, for example, the logistics of confiscating firearms in rural and remote areas, where some of these firearms — such as the Ruger Mini-14 — were widely used by hunters, farmers and recreational or competitive sport shooters,” he said.

“Expect the costs to climb significantly further as the business and personal stages of the program are implemented and as more firearms are prohibited.”

He said he expects the cost to stretch into the billions.

Simon Fraser University Prof. Gary Mauser mused that nearly $42 million is a lot of money to spend for what he said amounts to “grandstanding” by the federal government.

“Ottawa is not having much success with their efforts on this file,” he said.

“Ontario has refused to co-operate with future confiscations. Saskatchewan has asked to join the appeal. Requests for co-operating organizations have fallen flat.”

The fact that the now-banned guns sat safely with their owners without incident for the past four years suggests the 2020 bans — enacted after the 2020 mass shooting in Nova Scotia — were introduced for reasons other than just public safety, Mauser said.

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Last October, National Post learned Quebec-based anti-gun group PolySeSouvient was so angry that mandatory confiscation wasn’t part of the government’s gun control scheme it disinvited Prime Minister Justin Trudeau from future commemorations of the 1989 École Polytechnique shooting.

The government added a confiscation program later that year. 

Questions are still swirling around Parliament Hill over how much the confiscation will ultimately cost taxpayers. 

Government documents obtained by National Post say costs could reach as high as $2 billion, far greater than election promises suggesting the program would only cost between $400 million and $600 million.

Tracey Wilson, spokesperson for the Canadian Coalition for Firearm Rights (CFFR), told National Post that skyrocketing costs so far don’t bode well for the program’s future. 

“Not only has not a single firearm been confiscated, the program itself doesn’t even exist — not even for willing retailers anxious to off-load unsellable inventory,” she said.

“The whole premise of the 2020 gun ban was that these firearms, previously approved for sporting and hunting purposes by the RCMP lab, were simply too dangerous to own. Yet four years later, they are all exactly where they’ve been for decades, if not generations — in the gun safes of licensed, RCMP-vetted gun owners.”

National Post

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