On December 5, at a late afternoon press conference in Ottawa, Canada’s federal Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc announced that 324 additional makes and variants of rifles would be added to the 2020 list of over 1,500 so-called “assault-style firearms,” being semiautomatic guns that Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his officials had dramatically and disingenuously described as “military grade assault weapons.” These added guns, said LeBlanc via video-link at the press conference, “are made for battlefields, not for hunting.”
As was the case when the initial ban was announced in May 2020, the ban takes effect “immediately.” These firearms may no longer be lawfully used, sold, or imported into Canada, and may only be transported or transferred “under extremely limited circumstances.” (Prohibited firearms previously classified as non-restricted may be used for hunting pursuant to an aboriginal or treaty right, or for sustenance hunting or trapping pending a compliant replacement firearm being acquired.)
In what has become a characteristic of the slapdash way that the Trudeau government has dealt with its bans, a reporter at the December 5 event noted that a list of the newly illegal guns was not available or included in their materials. “None of us have seen the list…Can somebody please give us an indication of which specific makes and models are now banned…?” RCMP Deputy Commissioner Bryan Larkin responded that “the list will be circulated very shortly.” (A commenter on the X account of the Canadian gun rights site TheGunBlog.ca observed that the RCMP website on gun transfers was, however, shut down for “maintenance” at the same time that the press conference began.)
LeBlanc indicated the new list had been compiled after “robust consultation with experts from the RCMP.” The list has since been posted online by LeBlanc’s department, Public Safety Canada, and includes several .22 caliber rimfire rifles (so much for the RCMP’s “expertise” on what constitutes “battlefield” ready).
The amnesty period, due to expire on October 30, 2025, and the mandatory surrender and compensation (“buyback”) that governs guns on the 2020 list will apply to the newly-added firearms as well.
LeBlanc also stated that the first phase of the so-called “buyback,” for firearm businesses, has moved forward. According to the government, the first phase “has already begun with a few businesses for testing and will be open to all firearms businesses across the country in the next few days.” LeBlanc outlined a new development in this respect – that as “part of that process, the government has committed to the Ukrainian government to identify whether some of these guns could be donated to support the fight for democracy in Ukraine.” Minister of National Defense Bill Blair added that the “Department of National Defense would begin working with the Canadian companies that have weapons that Ukraine needs and which are already eligible for the assault-style compensation program in order to get these weapons out of Canada and into the hands of the Ukrainians.” The participation is apparently optional, as the companies that “choose to participate in this initiative” are eligible for the same amount of government compensation as other businesses participating in the “buyback.”
“Our work isn’t finished,” LeBlanc said. New regulations would be offered on December 13 “to ensure that no firearm can come into Canada or be sold in Canada without first being approved by the RCMP,” an “evergreen” way of imposing firearm bans in the future. Further, a panel of experts would be created “to support the RCMP…who would look at the classification of firearms that are not a part of the models that are currently prohibited…and we will take additional measures in order to further restrict access to those firearms.”
The government statement accompanying the list of newly banned guns advises that the “Government also continues to act to fully implement former Bill C-21, with remaining provisions to come into force early in the new year. In particular, no later than January 2025, the Government intends to table measures in Parliament to address the rates of gun violence in situations of gender-based and intimate partner violence. Regulations to implement the new yellow flag laws will also be introduced this Spring. In addition, the Government will also introduce regulations concerning large-capacity magazines in March 2025.”
All of this seems like desperate, performative posturing by a political party that is poised to lose big in the next federal election. Even without the new list, the implementation of the confiscation and compensation program for individual gun owners is already a massive boondoggle. The latest issue, a plan to have gun owners surrender their guns by shipping them using the post office, was stymied when Canada Post officials demurred on security and safety grounds; all that became completely moot once Canada Post employees went (and remain) on strike in November.
LeBlanc has consistently refrained from giving a start date for the individual “buyback” program and that didn’t change with the December 5 event. As indicated, phase 1, the business confiscations, hasn’t yet “fully launched;” Minister of Public Services Jean-Yves Duclos said on December 5 that “a pilot program that has been running for the past month has collected and destroyed a ‘couple dozen’ guns.”
Conservative Member of Parliament Raquel Dancho (Kildonan-St.Paul), the Shadow Minister for Public Safety, responded to the ban. Under Trudeau’s Liberal government, she said, “[v]iolent crime has exploded over 50% and gun crime has surged 116%, but “[i]nstead of locking up criminals and reversing his laws that have contributed to the alarming explosion of crime in our country, Trudeau chose to attack lawful and vetted hunters, sport shooters, and Indigenous Peoples who safely and legally use firearms as they have done for generations.”
As we’ve noted time and again (here, here, here, here and here for instance), Trudeau’s government launched its gun ban and mandatory confiscation scheme with no implementation plan in place, with taxpayers facing an increasing and unwelcome price tag for enforcement and compensation that is likely to exceed billions of dollars. TheGunBlog.ca points out that the government has already missed all of its previous confiscation milestones, and twice delayed the amnesty deadline. “They had hoped to complete it 2.5 years ago, and have yet to begin.” It predicts that affected “firearm owners have no intention or incentive to surrender their goods to a political regime that will almost certainly be out of office before the confiscation deadline of 30 October 2025.”
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