Ottawa delays planned restart of gun 'buyback' program for retailers with banned stock
OTTAWA — The federal government’s plans to resume a compensation program for retailers for inventories of formerly legal guns that were subsequently banned by the Liberals have been delayed from this fall until an unspecified date.
The change comes as Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government intends to move ahead with the launch of a national “buyback” program by the end of the year for individual gun owners whose formerly legal firearms ended up being banned.
In September, when Public Safety Minister Gary Anandasangaree announced the “buyback” program was being piloted for individuals in Cape Breton, N.S., his department confirmed that the second phase of the program for businesses with banned stock would resume in the “coming weeks,” after it was closed this past spring.
Public Safety Canada’s webpage dedicated to providing information on both programs also states that the resumption of the program for businesses was slated to begin “later this fall.”
However, it now appears the government is backing off from that timeline.
“We will be reopening the second round of the business phase of the Assault-Style Firearms Compensation Program. The exact date will be shared soon,” wrote Simon Lafortune, a spokesman for Anandasangaree.
Wes Winkel, president of the Canadian Sporting Arms and Ammunition Association, which the government has contracted since 2023 and assisted with pricing, confirmed to National Post there has been an “indefinite delay” on the part of the federal government.
Neither Anandasangaree’s office nor the public safety department has clarified the reason behind the delay.
“We will continue to work closely with industry stakeholders and law enforcement partners to ensure that the second phase of the business portion of the buyback program runs efficiently and securely,” Lafortune said. “Further updates will be provided as implementation work progresses, and the government thanks Canadian businesses for their continued cooperation and patience as this important initiative moves forward.”
Rod Giltaca, CEO and Executive Director of the Canadian Coalition for Firearm Rights, which promotes itself as “Canada’s gun lobby,” said the reasons the federal government has yet to complete the retail side of the program remain a “mystery.”
“This program has been a disaster for over half a decade,” he said in an interview on Thursday.
The Liberals’ efforts to remove what it has called “assault-style” firearms from businesses and individuals have proven to be a long and troubled journey.
Former prime minister Justin Trudeau campaigned on doing so during the 2019 federal election, with him announcing an initial ban on some 1,500 makes and models of firearms, including the AR-15, through an order-in-council in May 2020, following a shooting spree in Portapique, N.S.
Since then, hundreds more types of firearms have been added to the prohibited list through announcements made in December 2024 and March of this year. More than 2,500 makes and models of firearms have now been banned in Canada.
The amnesty order to allow firearms owners with banned guns to possess them without criminal liability has also been extended several times beyond the two years Trudeau initially promised in 2019. The federal government’s latest extension brings the amnesty program to October 2026.
The federal government reported that during the first phase of the compensation program for retailers affected by the original 2020 bans, more than 12,000 guns had been collected from businesses by the time it reached its original April 30 closing date, with some $22 million worth of compensation doled out.
Giltaca said the prohibitions on gun retailers have “been very damaging” to many businesses, stuck with the cost of having to store prohibited inventory, with some forced to close.
When it comes to the program for individuals, the federal government has yet to release the results of the pilot program it ran in Cape Breton, which, when it was announced back in September, was stated to be for a “maximum of 200” banned firearms, to test the online portal, collection, and destruction process.
This week, the chair of Cape Breton’s police board told reporters that he had heard there were between “10 to 22 collected.”
A request for a response from Cape Breton police, which teamed up with Public Safety Canada to pilot the program, has not yet been returned. Cape Breton Police Chief Robert Walsh declined to tell local reporters this week the results of the program, saying it was the federal government’s pilot.
“If the government isn’t extremely humiliated over this whole affair, they definitely should be,” Giltaca said.
This week, Anandasangaree told reporters the government was “analyzing the results of the pilot,” adding that the “technical capabilities have been satisfied,” with the plan to roll out the program nationally only weeks away.
The minister’s spokesman said the pilot, which is now closed, lasted a total of six weeks, with the first three weeks open for firearms owners to declare the fact that they owned a prohibited weapon, with the following three weeks, “for collection, verification, destruction, and payment.”
He added that the results of the pilot would be released before the national launch, and the government remained committed to finishing the program.
“As you know, the pilot’s objective was to ensure that we are fully prepared to launch the Assault-Style Firearms Compensation Program nationally,” Lafortune wrote. “We will have more to share on the pilot’s results in due course and will be launching the national program before the end of 2025.”
National Post
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