Trudeau makes first step in controversial gun buyback program

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is planning to keep a four-year-old promise he made to buy back millions of now-illegal firearms, and he just unveiled his first big milestone. 

In May 2020, Trudeau promised that his government would buy back the firearms made illegal when he banned the sale of over 1500 different models of assault-style weapons.

"These weapons were designed for one purpose and one purpose only: to kill the largest number of people in the shortest amount of time," Trudeau said at the time according to CBC News. 

"There is no use and no place for such weapons in Canada,” Trudeau continued, adding that hunters in Canada didn’t need a firearm like an AR-15 to “bring down a deer.”

Trudeau noted there would be a two-year amnesty period to allow gun owners to dispose of their firearms or apply for them to be grandfathered, a CBC News report noted.

This amnesty period was set to end on April 30th but delays in the buyback program pushed an extension to October, which gave Trudeau enough time to launch the first step in his scheme to get assault-style weapons out of the hands of Canadians. 

On April 26, Trudeau’s Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino announced that the government had signed a $700,000 contract with the Canadian Sporting Arms and Ammunition Association to buy back 11,000 banned guns and parts from retailers. 

"This is a significant milestone," Minister Mendicino said during a press conference announcing the government's new buyback plan, which quite seemed limited in scope. 

Details on the deal were sparse according to the Toronto Star, and neither the cost of the program nor its launch date was shared at the press conference, though the minister did note that the government was going to do everything that it could to get the program launched. 

“There are a lot of partners we need to coordinate with and that’s our focus right now, just to keep at it round the clock so that we can get assault-style firearms which were designed for a battlefield out of our communities,” Mendicino explained. 

While Mendicino’s explanation of the new program focused on getting assault-style weapons out of Canadian communities, Conservative Public Safety Critic Raquel Dancho said the program would do little to change the violence on the country’s streets.  

Photo by Twitter @RaquelDancho

“Those firearms are under lock and key in firearm shops,” Dancho said according to the Toronto Star, adding that the buyback plan “is not impacting the gangsters in Toronto that are killing police officers and innocent Canadians.”

According to the Toronto Star, Trudeau's efforts to get his gun buyback program off the ground have been impeded by several factors, the most important of which was the cost to actually purchase the weapons back and set up the program. 

The newspaper noted in its report on Mendicino’s announcement that in 2021 the Parliamentary Budget Office fixed the price tag for Trudeau’s buyback program at roughly $756 million. 

Mendocino’s announcement also ruffled the feathers of the Canadian Sporting Arms and Ammunition Association which said in a statement that the organization would “not be participating in any way with the buyback of individually owned firearms" according to CBC. 

The gun rights group also noted that it “remains skeptical as to the viability of this industry buyback program; due to positive changes in provincial legislation, the absence of federal budgetary allocation, and lacking a concrete process of implementation.”

Overall the announcement of the government’s first buyback scheme is probably a big political win for the Liberals, especially as they come up against increasing pressure from their political base to get something done on the issues before the next election.