Canada's Gun Grab Price Tag Continues To Grow

Remember back in March, when we told you about the rapidly rising costs of the Canadian federal government’s planned gun grab? As it turns out, the feds were just getting started on running up the bill. Now, less than six months later, they’ve added more than 50 percent more to their tab—and they still haven’t seized a single gun.

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How we got here

The Great Canadian Gun Grab is the result of the Order In Council firearms bans of May 1, 2020. As a reaction to a mass murder weeks earlier, in the province of Nova Scotia, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of the federal Liberal Party announced a ban on a wide range of firearms. Business and private sales of these guns were halted, and Trudeau announced his government’s plans to eventually seize these firearms.

While there was a broad range of firearms named in the Order In Council, they mostly had one thing in common: They were semi-automatic rifles or shotguns. The Order In Council singled out AR-15 pattern rifles (which were legal in Canada on a Restricted license) as well as many others, including the popular Norinco M305 (a copy of the M14 design), the Beretta CX4 Storm, Vz58-pattern rifles and even the Ruger Mini 14.

Months later, the government tried even more bans, with poorly-worded legislation suggesting the feds would seize common hunting rifles such as Winchester and Marlin lever .30-30s, not to mention military surplus Lee Enfields or Mausers. After weeks of boondoggling in parliamentary committees, much of that plan was walked back, but the Canadian government has been relentless in its plan to seize the firearms named in its original-from-2020 Order In Council. Numerous court battles to halt the seizure plans have been unsuccessful.

And yet, despite their regulatory march forward, the government has yet to seize any private citizens’ firearms named by the original announcement. While some shooters may have surrendered their firearms to the state, there has been no public confiscation plan enacted, even though four years have passed.

Most Canadian shooters believe the government lacks the manpower to enact any sort of widespread seizures, which is probably the case—especially since provincial governments sympathetic to gun owners have been throwing up legal roadblacks of their own, to stymie the feds. It also doesn’t help that one of the segments most likely to own the newly banned firearms is the police themselves. Many Canadian officers own AR-15s or other semi-autos for the purpose of recreational shooting or even private training. These law enforcement members are not happy with the feds’ machinations.

As a result, plans to use already-stretched-too-thin police forces seem to have fallen through, with alternative ideas bandied about. At one point, the feds were even talking about using the mail system as a sort of voluntary confiscation program, an idea that Canada Post quickly shot down. No doubt they were somewhat concerned about post offices turning into storage depots for semi-auto firearms, making them a prime target for gangs looking to beef up their firepower.

The bill so far

With all this in mind, it is still shocking to see that the bill for the gun grab so far has risen to at least $67M CAD as of September 2024 (roughly $50M USD). Back at the end of March, the bill was estimated at $42M CAD, which makes you wonder: What is the government spending all this money on?

Canadian senator Don Platt says he’s uncovered a bit of information, but it doesn’t account for the vast majority of the money spent. In a post on X, Senator Platt said “... This is an incredible amount of money to spend on a program that doesn’t yet exist, which ultimately targets licensed, trained, law-abiding gun owners – not criminals.

“And to top it off, they've spent $11.5 million of taxpayers hard earned money on external consultants - AND they refuse to table contract information …”

Meanwhile, firearms-related crime is getting even worse in Canada. It raises the question as to how much of that gun crime could have been prevented with a few million invested in law enforcement efforts that targeted real outlaws, not legally licensed firearms owners? We’ll never know, but the long-term consequences of the government’s expensive program to seize guns from legal Canadian shooters are affecting the whole country, even if non-shooters don’t realize it.

The road ahead

At this point, the government’s gun grab is slated to begin in the fall of 2025—a few weeks after Canada’s next federal election. Canadians are supposed to go to the polls next year, and you can expect the firearms issue to be front and center. The last election saw the majority of Canadians vote against Trudeau, and the vast majority of the country’s land mass was controlled by Conservative MPs—but the Liberals and NDP won enough seats, primarily in urban or suburban areas, to nail down a coalition government between themselves.

Recently, there has been considerable talk of a non-confidence vote toppling that coalition government ahead of the regularly scheduled election, but that currently seems unlikely. As a result, expect Canadian shooters to be dealing with this issue for at least another year, waiting for a change in government to give them a reprieve, or seal their firearm’s fate if the vote doesn’t go their way.