ottawa –
The federal Liberal government has given two more years to build on a long-standing promise to establish a buyback program for firearms it banned in the wake of the deadly 2020 mass shooting in Nova Scotia.
The amnesty period, which was scheduled to expire at the end of this month, will last until October 30, 2025, after the next federal election is scheduled.
On Wednesday, staff quietly added that update to Public Safety Canada’s website, raising concerns from gun control advocates but to the relief of gun owners and retailer representatives.
The amnesty applies to anyone who owns one of the more than 1,500 models and variants of “assault-style” firearms that Ottawa has banned, saying guns like the AR-15 have no place in Canadian society.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced the ban in May 2020, within days of a gunman in Nova Scotia carrying out the deadliest mass shooting in modern Canadian history.
The Liberals promised to compensate those who owned such weapons through a buy-back program and granted gun owners a two-year amnesty under the Criminal Code.
The Liberal Party first promised to launch such a program during the 2019 federal election won by Prime Minister Trudeau, and promised to launch it again during the party’s successful 2021 campaign.
However, in early 2022, the government announced that the buyback plan was still underway and extended the amnesty until October 2023.
Wednesday’s extension extends the deadline by 10 days from the date the election law says the next election must be held, but elections could be called sooner.
A spokesperson for Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc said in a brief statement that the government is “committed to introducing a firearms buyback program that will allow law-abiding gun owners to turn in their firearms and receive compensation.” Stated.
“While we are working on its activation, we have decided to extend the pardon order until October 30, 2025,” Jean-Sebastien Comeau said in an email.
The group Ottawa announced it will work with to craft the commercial aspects of the buyout program said Wednesday that an extension of the amnesty is inevitable.
Wes Winkel, president of the Canadian Sporting Arms and Ammunition Association, said some retailers with affected inventory are nervous as the late October deadline approaches.
Although the government is still in the early stages of sorting out what a compensation program for businesses will look like, Winkel believes share buybacks could begin by October 2025, at least on the commercial side. He said that
But he added that retailers are frustrated because they have to pay the costs of storing, storing and insuring prohibited firearms.
“Some members pay more than $30,000 a year just to insure prohibited inventory.”
For Winkel, the Liberal Party’s decision to postpone the amnesty order again raised questions about whether the ban was really needed as urgently as the government had initially claimed.
“Was there really a need to go through with the rapid ban?”
Alberta Conservative MP Dane Lloyd, the party’s critic in parliament on emergency preparedness, struck a similar tone in an online post Wednesday, saying, “The Liberals do not view firearms as a public safety issue.” said.
“It’s all about politics and division,” he posted on Platform X, formerly known as Twitter.
Melissa Lanzmann, one of the Conservative Party’s deputy leaders, also said in an interview with the Canadian Press that the money the government plans to spend on the buyback program could be redirected to other “safety mechanisms,” and that “there are We won’t take away property you don’t have.” town. “
Congressional budget officials said in 2021 that such a program would cost more than $750 million.
Gun control advocacy group Doctors of Canada said in a statement Wednesday that it was “disappointed that there was no clear plan for buybacks that would accompany the amnesty extension.”
He said he had not received any warning that an extension was planned and plans to raise his concerns directly with LeBlanc.
PolySeSouvient said in a statement: “It is extremely disconcerting that three and a half years after the initial ban was announced, no progress has been made towards implementing the buyback program.”
The prominent gun control advocacy group includes students and alumni of Montreal’s Ecole Polytechnique, where a gunman killed 14 women in 1989 with a Ruger Mini 14.
The paper said the amnesty extension was “evidence of the government’s overall mismanagement of the assault weapons file, including Bill C-21.”
The bill, which is still being considered by the Senate, was condemned by many gun owners, the Congress of First Nations and the federal Conservative Party, as it was seen as an attempt to ban rifles commonly used by hunters. Ta.
House passage of the bill had been shelved for months amid backlash over proposed definitions that would have expanded the ban to include an additional 482 types of guns.
The government ultimately rescinded that definition, opting instead for a regulatory approach that ensures guns are correctly classified before entering the Canadian market.
“Despite repeated delays in the start of the promised compulsory purchase program, tens of thousands of fully functional assault-style weapons remain in circulation and have the potential to cause massive injury and death if used for lethal purposes.” “It serves no purpose to protect Canadians from the associated risks,” PolySeSouvient said in a statement.
Suzanne Zakour, legal director of the National Women’s and Law Association, said the organization was concerned about whether the buyback program would actually happen.
She attributed much of the difficulty in achieving that to the circulation of misinformation about the Liberals’ gun control efforts.
“There’s still a lot of misinformation out there about this issue.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 11, 2023.