Cost of Ottawa’s gun ban fiasco may reach $6 billion

Four years ago, the Trudeau government banned “1,500 types” of “assault-style firearms.” It’s time to ask if public safety has improved as promised.

This ban instantly made it a crime for federally-licenced firearms owners to buy, sell, transport, import, export or use hundreds of thousands formerly legal rifles and shotguns. According to the government, the ban targets “assault-style weapons,” which are actually classic semi-automatic rifles and shotguns that have been popular with hunters and sport shooters for more than 100 years. When announcing the ban, the prime minister said the government would confiscate the banned firearms and their legal owners would be “grandfathered” or receive “fair compensation.” That hasn’t happened.

As of October 2024, the government has revealed no plans about how it will collect the newly-banned firearms nor has it made any provisions for compensation in any federal budget since the announcement in 2020. Originally, the government enacted a two-year amnesty period to allow compliance with the ban. This amnesty expired in April 2022 and has been twice extended, first to Oct. 30, 2023, then to Oct. 30, 2025.

Clearly, the ban—which the government calls a “buyback”—has been a gong show from the beginning. Since Trudeau’s announcement four years ago, virtually none of the banned firearms have been surrendered. The Ontario government refuses to divert police resources to cooperate with this federal “buyback” scheme. The RCMP’s labour union has said it’s a “misdirected effort when it comes to public safety.” The Canadian Sporting Arms & Ammunition Association, which represents firearms retailers, said it will have “zero involvement” in helping confiscate these firearms. Even Canada Post wants nothing to do with Trudeau’s “buyback” plan. And again, the government has revealed no plan for compensation—fair or otherwise.

And yet, according to the government, it has already spent $67.2 million, which includes compensation for 60 federal employees working on the “buyback,” which still doesn't exist.

It remains unclear just how many firearms the 2020 ban includes. The Parliamentary Budget Officer estimates range between 150,000 to more than 500,000, with an estimated total value between $47 million and $756 million. These costs only include the value of the confiscated firearms and exclude the administrative costs to collect them and the costs of destroying the collected firearms. The total cost of this ban to taxpayers will be more than $4 billion and possibly more than $6 billion.

Nevertheless, while the ban of remains a confusing mess, after four years we should be able to answer one key question. Has the ban made Canadians safer?

According to Statistics Canada, firearm-related violent crime swelled by 10 per cent from 2020 to 2022 (the latest year of comparable data), from 12,614 incidents to 13,937 incidents. And in “2022, the rate of firearm-related violent crime was 36.7 incidents per 100,000 population, an 8.9% increase from 2021 (33.7 incidents per 100,000 population). This is the highest rate recorded since comparable data were first collected in 2009.”

Nor have firearm homicides decreased since 2020. Perhaps this is because lawfully-held firearms are not the problem. According to StatsCan, “the firearms used in homicides were rarely legal firearms used by their legal owners.” However, crimes committed by organized crime have increased by more than 170 per cent since 2016 (from 4,810 to 13,056 crimes).

Meanwhile, the banned firearms remain locked in the safes of their legal owners who have been vetted by the RCMP and are monitored nightly for any infractions that might endanger public safety.

Indeed, hunters and sport shooters are among the most law-abiding people in Canada. Many Canadian families and Indigenous peoples depend on hunting to provide food for the family dinner table through legal harvesting, with the added benefit of getting out in the wilderness and spending time with family and friends. In 2015, hunting and firearm businesses alone contributed more than $5.9 billion to Canada’s economy and supported more than 45,000 jobs. Hunters are the largest contributors to conservation efforts, contributing hundreds of millions of dollars to secure conservation lands and manage wildlife. The number of licenced firearms owners has increased 17 per cent since 2015 (from 2.026 million to 2.365 million) in 2023.

If policymakers in Ottawa and across the country want to reduce crime and increase public safety, they should enact policies that actually target criminals and use our scarce tax dollars wisely to achieve these goals.