On March 9, when Mark Carney was selected to replace Justin Trudeau as Canada’s Prime Minister and the new Liberal Party leader, he ignored the opportunity the situation presented to jettison his predecessor’s useless and expensive “assault-style weapon” ban and mandatory gun confiscation program. Instead, Carney opted to reaffirm his commitment to the Liberal’s gun control policies, and, in addition to a promise to “reinvigorate the assault-style firearm buyback program,” he blamed firearms for crime (“You can’t be serious about being tough on crime if you’re not willing to be tough on guns”) and pointed to “irresponsible American gun laws, and [America’s] weak border enforcement” as driving gun crimes in Canada.
Unfortunately, Carney’s “reinvigorated” gun control program now has the blessing of Canada’s Federal Court of Appeal, following an April 15 decision by a unanimous three-judge panel authored by the court’s Chief Justice, Yves de Montigny.
The case, Canadian Coalition for Firearm Rights v. Canada (Attorney General), 2025 FCA 82, arose out of consolidated judicial review applications brought by firearm owners, firearm businesses, and gun rights advocates, headed by the Canadian Coalition for Firearms Rights (CCFR), challenging the Trudeau government’s May 1, 2020 Order in Council, SOR/2020-96. This regulation, which bypassed the legislative process and was not prepublished or subject to public input or comments, immediately classified 1,500 models of firearms (and modified versions and unnamed variants), previously listed as “non-restricted” or “restricted,” as illegal “prohibited” firearms under the federal Criminal Code. A second Order in Council created an amnesty period to allow affected gun owners to continue to possess (but not sell, transport, or generally use) their guns, pending the implementation of a mandatory government confiscation (“buyback”) of the newly prohibited firearms. An accompanying “Regulatory Impact Analysis Statement” explained the background and objectives of these measures (“Assault-style firearms are not suitable for hunting or sport shooting purposes given the inherent danger that they pose to public safety. The newly prescribed firearms are primarily designed for military or paramilitary purposes …”).
The Attorney Generals for Alberta and Saskatchewan appeared as intervenors in support of the applicants-appellants. The grounds on which the laws were challenged included the following:
First, the ability of the Governor in Council, in “its role at the apex of the executive branch,” to classify firearms as non-restricted, restricted, and prohibited was limited by s. 117.15(2) of the Criminal Code, which states that no firearm, weapon or ammunition may be prescribed as prohibited or restricted “if, in the opinion of the Governor in Council, the thing to be prescribed is reasonable for use in Canada for hunting or sporting purposes.” The challengers alleged that this authority extended only to prohibiting firearms that were not reasonable for hunting or sporting purposes, and that the Governor in Council either failed to conduct any genuine analysis of the issue or that any opinion was not reasonable. The CCFR presented expert evidence in the court below that examined “the intentional design and intended function of prohibited firearms, their common and historical use, as well as legislative history, that is, whether they were previously non-restricted,” to inform this analysis. The regulations, it was further claimed, were unreasonable, as not being “based on a rational chain of analysis to the extent that the [Regulatory Impact Analysis Statement] uses vague descriptors that lack meaning (e.g., “assault-style”, “military-style”), and illogical factors (such as “large magazine capacity”)…” As a rule, all firearms all had the potential to be deadly, so reliance on this factor was inappropriate in assessing a firearm’s reasonableness for hunting or sporting purposes. The exception in the regulations that allowed the use of the banned guns for exercising aboriginal and treaty rights and for subsistence hunting during the amnesty was clearly at odds with classifying the guns as not reasonable for use for hunting.
The applicant-appellants also challenged what they described as the executive’s unlawful subdelegation of authority to classify firearms as “prohibited” to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP). A division of the RCMP oversees firearms licensing and registration, and its firearm technicians “collect and assess technical information to classify firearms for the purposes of firearms registration.” Because the regulations contained the undefined term “variant or modified version,” the RCMP made the determination of whether certain firearms were prohibited “variants.” “Not only is there no authority in the Code to prescribe unnamed variants as prohibited firearms, even if such a power can be inferred it should be exercised by the [Governor in Council] itself and not subdelegated to the RCMP.”
The third branch of arguments rested on violations of rights under the 1960 Bill of Rights and Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms. While the Bill of Rights has some private property protection (“security of the person and enjoyment of property, and the right not to be deprived thereof except by due process of law”), the Charter lacks both a right to keep and bear arms and any explicit protection of private property rights. Moreover, the Charter’s fundamental rights and freedoms are nonetheless still subject to be restricted according to “such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society” (section 1’s “reasonable limits” clause).
The government’s use of “any variants or other modified versions” was, the challengers claimed, unconstitutionally vague and failed to provide an intelligible standard, and the regulations overall were arbitrary and overbroad in violation of the Charter’s s. 7 guarantee (the “right to life, liberty and security of the person and the right not to be deprived thereof except in accordance with the principles of fundamental justice”). Allowing the use of some firearms for subsistence hunting while generally banning their use was arbitrary, and the regulations were “overly broad because of the sheer number of firearms that were prohibited at once.” Lastly, the regulations deprived gun owners of their property rights without due process, thereby infringing subsection 1(a) of the Bill of Rights.
All of these arguments were dismissed.
In addition to the presumption of the validity of the regulations, which the appellants failed to rebut, the court concluded that the Governor in Council had formed the necessary “reasonable” opinion required by s. 117.15(2) of the Code, as evidenced by the information listed in the Regulatory Impact Analysis Statement, and took into account “broad policy considerations” and not just the inherent deadliness of all firearms. The court noted it could well be “that, from the sole perspective of a sensible hunter or sportsman, it makes no sense to ban firearms that are well suited or even specifically designed for hunting or sport purposes.” However, the “inherent danger that some firearms pose to public safety because of their lethality and their ability to injure or kill a large number of people in a short period of time, the fact that they have been used in mass shootings in Canada and abroad, the fact that they are disproportionate for civilian use, and the increasing demand for measures to address gun violence are all valid considerations in determining whether their use is reasonable for hunting and sporting purposes.” The amnesty order (which allowed some uses of the banned guns) did “not undermine the reasonableness” of the Governor in Council’s opinion because that order was “transitory” and “only meant to protect lawful firearms owners who acted in good faith when they originally purchased their firearms.”
On the argument that the executive impermissibly subdelegated its criminal law-making authority, the court concluded that s. 117.15(2) of the Code allowed the Governor in Council to sweep in variants and modified versions of the banned firearms as “prohibited,” too. This was “not a case where someone other than the original delegate has exercised authority to determine what firearms are prohibited” because the regulations themselves, not the RCMP, prohibited these variants, “whether they named them or not.” The RCMP’s database classifying firearms was “no more than a guide for the implementation and application of the Regulations,” and was “not meant to (nor does it) establish an individual’s rights or obligations.” The RCMP’s list was “intended to be a non-binding administrative tool,” with the statute and regulations being “the prevailing legal authority with respect to firearm classification.”
The unnamed “variants” were also implicated in the constitutional arguments related to vagueness, overbreath and the arbitrary nature of the regulatory language. The court opted to accept a government witness’s evidence that “variant” did not give rise to an unintelligible standard because the term was “well understood in the firearms industry and in the gun literature,” and that the regulations “and the sheer number of firearms identified as variants assist[] in interpreting what may be an unnamed variant.” In one illuminating comment, the court indicated that “the alternative (a legislated definition and a listing of all prohibited variants) would be impractical and would lead to the Regulations being constantly out of date.” A gun owner in doubt as to whether any particular gun was a prohibited “variant” would have recourse to the RCMP and its non-binding administrative classifications, or to “the firearm’s retailer and manufacturer.”
The court, though, was apparently unaware that this uncertainly is a program feature, not a bug. As the Canadian Shooting Sports Association (CSSA) points out, the Canadian-made Crusader Arms Crypto, “a rifle specifically designed to meet post-Bill C-21 requirements and regulations [amending the definition of “prohibited firearm”], was arbitrarily banned by the RCMP” on April 4th. “The Crypto rifle was designed specifically to meet the requirements of Bill C-21, and now, without warning or justification, it’s been prohibited. This kind of arbitrary decision-making undermines the credibility of the firearms classification system and creates undue hardship for law-abiding gun owners and firearms manufacturers.” The Liberal government’s ever-expanding list of banned firearms is nothing more than a progressive series of steps towards a national ban of all firearms.
With respect to overbreadth and arbitrariness (that there was no rational connection between the purpose of the regulations and their effect), the fact that the firearms and unnamed variants were all capable of causing significant harm overcame these arguments. By the appellants’ own admission, all firearms were inherently dangerous, and even if “the firearms prohibited by the Regulations have been used for hunting and sport shooting in the past [this] is irrelevant to the arbitrariness and overbreadth analysis.” The government was “certainly entitled to react to changing circumstances, in this case the growing public safety concern that some firearms are not suitable for civilian use and have been used in mass shootings in Canada and abroad.” Prior use of guns for hunting and sporting purposes did “not alter the fact that they were designed with the intention to be used by the military and capable of killing large numbers of people in a short period of time.” The regulations were “rationally connected to a legitimate objective for the state to pursue,” and were, accordingly, not overbroad or arbitrary so as to violate the Charter’s s. 7 principles of fundamental justice, or any other provision of the Charter.
On the remaining argument, the procedural protections guaranteed by due process to property rights under the Bill of Rights, the court explicitly found that these only applied in the context of an adjudication of an individual’s rights and obligations before a court or tribunal, and did not confer on individual citizens a right to notice and hearing to contest the passage of a statute, or to executive acts or processes before a government minister or the Governor in Council. Unlike a criminal prosecution, in this case the “Regulations do not involve an adjudicative setting for individual rights or the application of discretion to a specific set of facts. They apply to all firearms owners in Canada, based on public safety considerations, and their application is non-discretionary.” The affected gun owners were not legally entitled to advance notice of the regulations, “and the Bill of Rights does not limit delegation or require compensation.”
Reacting to the decision, the CCFR responded in a statement posted to their website:
It’s bad news for Canadians for multiple reasons. It is the opinion of the judges that the “protections” in the Criminal Code to prevent the Governor in Counsel (GIC) from banning guns that are legitimate for hunting and sporting use, are irrelevant. Section 56 [paragraph 56] of the decision illustrates that the protection provision is subject to the whim of the GIC, who can change their mind at any time.
The decision is clear, the courts will not constrain the government’s overreach on this issue. This has negative implications on many aspects of the legal and legislative system in Canada.
The group is “reviewing the decision in depth over the next while and will advise on next steps,” which could possibly include seeking leave to appeal the decision to the Supreme Court of Canada.
If there is anything positive to come from this decision, it is the message that the courts cannot be relied upon to curtail the government’s ever-increasing gun bans and confiscation of lawfully acquired property, all in the name of an illusory public safety strategy that does nothing to thwart criminals in illegal possession of illegal weapons.
Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre, who supports a repeal of the Liberal gun bans, recently reminded Canadians that “ever since the Liberals started this campaign to demonize and harass licensed, law-abiding, trained and tested sports shooters and hunters, gun crime has gone up by 116%.” The CSSA adds that in the last decade, gang homicides have increased by 78%, and human trafficking and violent crime have soared as well. Even the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, an unlikely partisan for gun rights, points out that “[e]very year since the gun ban was announced in 2020, violent gun crime in Canada has increased,” with experts saying “that this gun ban and buyback won’t do anything to make Canadians safer.”
Fortunately, Canadians opposed to this misdirected and increasing criminalization of responsible firearms ownership (or who simply object to the massive waste of taxpayer dollars that the Liberal gun ban and “buyback” represent) have one more chance to send a message and end this program, when voters head to the polls this month to elect their next federal government. Canadians, observes the CSSA, “are less safe now than at any point in the past generation. And the people who caused this wave of chaos want four more years to make it even worse…Vote for freedom and safety.”
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