Liberals ban hundreds more firearms, look to send banned guns to Ukraine

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OTTAWA — The federal government is adding hundreds more types of firearms to its list of banned guns and looking to send some of them to Ukraine.

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On Thursday, Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc announced the Liberals were adding 324 more “unique makes and models” of what he called “assault-style” firearms to its list of banned guns, taking effect immediately.

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All current and future variants of these guns would be prohibited. The total number of affected firearms sits around 14,500, according to Public Safety Canada.

The announcement comes on the eve of the 35th anniversary of the École Polytechnique shooting in Montreal on Dec. 6, 1989, where a gunman targeting women killed 14 and injured 10 others.

Honouring those killed in mass shootings means taking action on gun control, LeBlanc said.

In May 2020, the Liberal government announced it was banning some 1,500 types of firearms, promising to compensate gun owners and businesses through a still not-yet-functional forced-buyback program. The Parliamentary Budget Officer has estimated the program could cost upwards of $750 million, depending on its design.

An amnesty order protecting from prosecution gun owners and businesses with prohibited inventory they acquired lawfully, including the 324 models added Thursday, is currently in place until October 2025, several days after the next federal election is scheduled to take place.

LeBlanc said on Thursday that the pilot phase of the forced-buyback program targeting distributors and retailers is underway, with four businesses currently participating.

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It would be open for all businesses “in the coming days,” he said.

He also said that the guns taken from retailers could be shipped to Ukraine, which is fighting a war against Russia’s 2022 invasion.

“As part of that process, the Government of Canada has committed to the Ukrainian government to identify whether some of these guns could be donated to support the fight for democracy in Ukraine,” LeBlanc said.

Defence Minister Bill Blair said the Liberals asked the Ukrainians in October if their troops could use some of the guns Canada has banned .

“They confirmed that indeed some of the weapons that are part of the program would be suitable,” said Blair.

Businesses that choose to work with the Defence Department on the initiative would be compensated, he said.

LeBlanc said more gun-control measures are coming, with the RCMP studying what to do about the SKS, a popular hunting rifle, which the Liberals had originally tried to prohibit in 2022 but backed off from. He committed that he would resolve the SKS question by February 2025, when the government plans to come out with a new list of prohibited firearms.

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He noted that many First Nations and Inuit hunters use the SKS, which makes it more complicated to ban.

Alberta Justice Minister Mickey Amery criticized the latest prohibitions and said the province opposes them.

“It is disappointing that the federal government has decided to double-down on their firearms policies that are not rooted in evidence-based decision-making regarding public safety,” he said in a statement. “Instead of choosing to commit scarce resources to addressing criminal usage of firearms, such as through strengthening our border to combat the trafficking of firearms that make up the overwhelming majority of those used in violent crime, the federal government has chosen to focus its attention once again on undermining law-abiding firearms ownership in Alberta and across Canada.”

The Alberta UCP government has said it will not enforce the federal government’s mandatory-buyback program or require provincial officials to assist with it. Manitoba and Saskatchewan have also said they oppose the plan.

Amery said Thursday that Alberta will continue to leverage its provincial jurisdiction “to advocate for the interests of the law-abiding firearms community and businesses.”

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National Post

staylor@postmedia.com

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