Longer gun ban list to force Liberals into slower ‘buyback’ roll out

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OTTAWA — The federal government’s long-promised mandatory gun “buyback” will be rolling out in stages after the Liberal government announced it was adding hundreds more models to the prohibited firearms list just before the program was scheduled to launch.

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It is a situation one industry spokesman says “makes no sense.”

The federal Liberals announced on Thursday they were adding another 324 types of guns to their list of prohibited firearms, which was first announced in May 2020, when they banned some 1,500 makes and models. The total number of restricted models affected is now slightly more than 14,500, according to Public Safety Canada.

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A cornerstone of the government’s promise to take the guns from owners has been to provide some compensation to businesses and individuals who had purchased them legally.

More than four years after it was officially promised, a spokesman said Friday marked the official opening of the first phase of the buyback program, targeting businesses and dealers who had been left holding inventory of guns that were suddenly declared illegal. They will be contacted by the RCMP and asked to register for the program.

However, with the Liberals on Thursday adding hundreds of new models to the list, retailers and distributors with those models will have to wait longer.

“Right now, firearms businesses will be invited to submit claims for prohibited firearms that were identified in the 2020 order-in-council,” Mathis Denis, press secretary for Public Services Minister Jean-Yves Duclos, said in a statement.

“Firearms that were prohibited on December 5th will be included in early 2025 under the program and businesses will have the ability to submit a claim for these additional firearms.”

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The RCMP will be managing the process, Denis said.

Canadian Sporting Arms and Ammunition Association president Wes Winkel says he expects the program to experience “massive delays” because the hundreds of firearms models just added to the list will have to be priced and catalogued.

“I think that this is going to put large delays in it. I can’t imagine businesses wanting to do the 2020 prohibition first and then deal with these (newly prohibited models) later,” said Winkel.

Compensation amounts for guns to be seized under the May 2020 order were already available, noted Gabriel Brunet, a spokesman for Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc. The dollar figures for this week’s additions are expected to be available in January 2025, he said.

When it comes time to expand the program to take firearms from individual gun owners, as the Liberals have promised to do, Brunet said their list “will include all banned guns,” and the owners would receive information in the spring about participating. The government provided an “amnesty” for businesses and gun owners holding the recently banned weapons until October 2025, having previously extended it from spring 2022, as it faced difficulties in setting up the mandatory buyback.

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Last year, the government tapped Winkel’s association to assist it in developing a compensation structure for retailers. Winkel, who opposes the Liberals’ efforts, said his group largely played a consulting role.

He said the compensation being offered by the government for expropriating the firearms will not reflect the costs businesses have been paying to store and insure this stock for more than four years.

The way the program is supposed to work is for retailers to submit a list of their prohibited inventory, Winkel said, which he believes businesses want to do all at once, not at different times depending on the date the government declared a specific model as prohibited.

“I can’t imagine that they want to deal with the … initial makes and models from 2020, and then deal with the other 300 and some that they announced (Thursday) on a separate time,’ said Winkel.

“That makes no sense to me.”

But LeBlanc signalled that more firearms could still be banned in the coming months, including the SKS, a popular hunting rifle, which the minister says an expert committee is studying to determine whether it should be added to the prohibited list.

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He acknowledged doing so would not be without controversy, given how many Indigenous hunters use them.

Nathalie Provost, a survivor of the 1989 École Polytechnique shooting in Montreal, where a gunman targeting women killed 14 women and injured more, applauded the government’s decision to add more firearms to its prohibited list, which it announced on the eve of the 35th anniversary of the shooting on Friday.

Ministers also touted the results of a buyback pilot project it ran with four businesses, which resulted in several dozens banned guns being destroyed.

Winkel said he believes retailers may try to hold onto some prohibited stock in hopes that the party in government will change before the amnesty runs out in October 25, five days after the deadline for the next federal election.

“I believe participation is going to go down dramatically.”

Opposition Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre has promised to reverse the Liberals’ gun measures and often criticizes the buyback program as a waste of taxpayer money. The Parliamentary Budget Officer estimates the Liberal program could cost around $750 million, depending on its design.

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Teri Bryant, who serves as Alberta’s chief firearms officer, panned the Liberals’ latest announcement as nothing more than “political theatre.”

When it comes to the buyback program, she anticipates retailers’ willingness to participate will vary depending on factors, including how much inventory they have, as well as where they are located.

In Alberta, “where firearms are a part of our heritage,” she expects many will choose to wait.

While she anticipates that getting retailers on board will be less of challenge than asking gun owners themselves to hand over their firearms, Bryant says businesses with just a few prohibited guns in their inventory likely would not want to be seen as co-operating with a federal policy the vast majority of gun owners reject. Many of the retailers themselves are part of the gun-enthusiast community, she said.

“They don’t want to be seen, wouldn’t want to be seen, as traitors.”

National Post

staylor@postmedia.com

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