Canada Gun Grab Update: Province Gets Ready To Face Down The Feds

The Great Canadian Gun Grab continues to move forward, with the federal government spending millions on planning to seize a list of arbitrarily prohibited firearms (mostly semi-auto rifles) from law-abiding shooters and collectors. But there’s a new obstacle for the feds to overcome now. The provinces don’t necessarily want to play ball with the federal government’s plans. A recent communication from the Chief Firearms Officer of Saskatchewan makes it clear that, for now, the leadership there isn’t on board with the seizures.

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The background

In Canada, firearms regulations are mostly the federal government’s responsibility, although provinces do make their own gun laws as well. Most of those laws are tied to hunting regulations, except in Quebec, where the province retained a long gun registry when the rest of the country was required to delete that data.

Some provincial governments approve of the federal government’s plans to seize and destroy a long list of firearms that were banned on May 1, 2020, as a reaction to a mass killing on the country’s east coast. Other provincial governments do not approve. Some say the program will cost taxpayers too much money, or hinder already-stretched-too-thin police departments.

Other provincial leaders are against the seizures on principle and have made moves to oppose the federal government’s seizures. Alberta has written its own Firearms Act, which tries to bring gun laws under the province’s purview, and the ruling United Conservative Party appears to be working on a new bill of rights for that province that echoes Second Amendment language—minus the wording about a militia. They also appointed a Chief Firearms Officer who understands the issues inside out; Dr. Teri Bryant literally wrote the book on Nambu pistols.

Saskatchewan, the prairie province next door to Alberta, also appointed a very knowledgeable CFO. Robert Freberg served for decades on the Saskatoon Wildlife Federation, as well as serving on the National Board of Directors for the Canadian Shooting Sports Association and instructing firearms safety courses.

It should be no surprise that gun safety has been a focus of Freberg’s since taking the job—and it should be no surprise that he’s opposing the feds’ seizures.

Taking a stand

Saskatchewan has pushed back against the federal Liberal Party’s seizure plans for years now, and a key part of that pushback was creating a framework that bungs up any seizure plans with red tape.

Under Saskatchewan’s provincial laws, any firearms seizures must be undertaken by an agent licensed for such action. That’s logical—people who don’t understand firearms safety and storage shouldn’t be repossessing guns, although Canada’s feds appear to be proposing just that. Requiring seizure agents to have licensing would make sense.

But at this point, even as the federal government says it plans to start seizures in the upcoming year, Freberg says that Saskatchewan has received no applications for such licensing. On September 30, he reportedly sent a letter to the Canadian Sporting Arms & Ammunition Association (an industry body, roughly analogous to the NSSF in the U.S.) and the Federal Firearms Confiscation Program warning that if parties did not comply with provincial regulations during seizures, individuals could face penalties up to $20,000, and corporations could face penalties up to $100,000.

In other words: If the feds want to play with lawfare, then so will the province, and they could make it very expensive for the Canadian Sporting Arms & Ammunition Association to work with the government— which they have announced their intention to do. Will Saskatchewan win its battle against the federal government in court, which is where this will inevitably head? Probably not, but with a change in federal government highly likely in the next 12 months, a delay of even a few weeks could be enough to stop some Canadians from having their firearms seized.