Federal gun buyback program starts with pilot project in Nova Scotia, full rollout coming later

Public Safety Minister Gary Anandasangaree says he is 'resolved' to implement the gun buyback program and speaks about his 'misguided' leaked comments.

The federal government is kicking off its gun buyback program for individuals with a pilot project in Nova Scotia starting Tuesday, with full rollout of the program coming later this fall, according to Public Safety Minister Gary Anandasangaree.

“We are serious about removing assault-style firearms from our streets, limiting the devastating effects of firearms violence and helping make Canada safer,” Anandasangaree said in a press release Tuesday. “These assault-style firearms are largely designed to kill people, not for hunting or sport shooting and have no place in Canada.”

Since mid-2020, the federal government has banned more than 2,000 models of “assault-style firearms” and variants as part of its strategy to tackle gun violence.

The list of outlawed firearms has been expanded twice, following a ban on an initial slate of 1,500 guns.

Then-public safety minister Bill Blair said at the time that the firearms included on the list were “not suitable for hunting or sports shooting purposes,” adding that they were “designed for the battlefield, not for communities.”

The buyback program — which compensates businesses and individuals for guns on the prohibited firearms list — was already in effect for businesses, but had yet to roll out for individuals. An amnesty order giving gun owners a grace period to comply with the ban, meanwhile, was set to expire at the end of next month, but has been extended to next October.

“This program is voluntary,” Anandasangaree said on Parliament Hill Tuesday. “Nobody is having their weapon confiscated.”

“People who use rifles to hunt can still hunt if you want to purchase a hunting rifle,” he added “There are 19,000 legal options available in the Canadian market, and AR-15 is not one of those options, nor should it be one of those options.”

Critics of the firearms ban, however, say it unfairly impacts law-abiding gun owners, such as hunters, farmers, and sport shooters, while doing nothing to prevent violence by illegal gun owners, or preventing criminals from acquiring guns.

According to senior government officials a technical briefing ahead of the announcement, there’s been $742 million in allocated funding to the program since its inception in May 2020. The government estimates it’ll spend about $248 million on compensation for businesses and individuals through the program.

A 2021 analysis by the parliamentary budget officer estimated the cost of the program could exceed $750 million.

In a press release on Tuesday, the advocacy group PolySeSouvient — created in response to the 1989 massacre at the École Polytechnique — called on the government to add the Soviet-designed SKS rifle to its list of outlawed firearms.

“As long as the SKS is not prohibited, Canada does not have a ban on assault weapons,” the statement reads. “New SKS models will flood the market and replace models that have been banned. Nothing will change in the long run, other than a waste of hundreds-of-millions of taxpayers’ dollars.”

Minister has ‘absolute confidence’ in program despite leaked conversation

Anandasangaree, meanwhile, has faced scrutiny this week after an audio recording of a conversation between the minister and an acquaintance was circulated online. In it, Anandasangaree can be heard casting doubt on whether police will have the resources to enforce the firearms ban.

The public safety minister said in a statement to CTV News that his comments were “misguided” and that the conversation was recorded without his knowledge.

In the House of Commons on Monday, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre — who is opposed to the firearms ban and has called it an attack on law-abiding gun owners — said Anandasangaree “accidentally told the truth,” and “was recorded doing it.”

“He said that the gun grab is not worth the money, that it will go over budget, and that it would be better just to lock up the criminals, but that they’re going ahead with the bad policy because it’s good politics,” Poilievre said.

Asked by reporters on Parliament Hill Tuesday whether it’s appropriate to stay on as public safety minister considering his doubts in the buyback program, Anandasangaree said he has “absolute confidence” in it, and chalked up some of his earlier comments to “bad humour.”

“Saying something that I will do differently is not saying that I don’t have confidence in the program,” he said.

“That conversation … it was in a context of a scenario that was offered to me, and it was commentary on that,” he also said, when asked by a reporter why the government is moving forward with the program when the minister doesn’t believe it can be enforced.

In an interview on CTV Power Play with Vassy Kapelos on Tuesday, Anandasangaree insisted he believes in the program despite that he would likely have implemented it differently, and he was defiant that he will not resign as public safety minister.