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Ottawa’s gun confiscation failed its first real test
By Lethbridge Herald on January 16, 2026.
Gage Haubrich
TROY MEDIA
There comes a point in almost every Canadian’s life where someone sits you down and tells you that no matter how hard you try, it’s very unlikely that you are going to make it to the NHL.
That same type of tough love needs to be shown to Prime Minister Mark Carney and Public Safety Minister Gary Anandasangaree about the chances of successfully following through with Ottawa’s gun ban and confiscation program.
Like a hockey player who can’t skate backwards, it’s never been more obvious that it’s time to throw in the towel. The program is a clear failure; it won’t make Canadians safer, but it will cost taxpayers an untold sum of cash.
After banning more than 2,500 different makes and models of firearms over the last six years, the federal government finally launched its confiscation program to collect those guns from individual owners with a six-week pilot project in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia.
The government aimed to confiscate 200 firearms during the project. It only collected 25 from 16 different people.
That’s a clear failure.
And in typical federal government fashion, the lack of results doesn’t mean a lack of spending.
The government agreed to give at least $149,760 to the Cape Breton Regional Municipality to carry out the confiscation. The government also spent $26,535 in compensation to the owners of the banned guns.
That means the cost to taxpayers for each gun confiscated is about $7,000. If this program rolls out across the country, it’s going to get really expensive, really quickly.
Failing government programs often face legitimate criticism for two reasons: they cost taxpayers too much money or they don’t work.
Ottawa’s gun confiscation is a case where both ring true. Taxpayers will be on the hook for potentially billions of dollars to pay for it and it won’t make Canadians safer.
The first problem is the cost.
The government has committed $742 million to carry out its gun ban and confiscation scheme, according to Budget 2025, but the government has not been transparent on these costs to taxpayers.
The Liberal Party initially said the confiscation would cost $200 million in 2019. The Parliamentary Budget Officer said it will cost up to $756 million to compensate owners for their firearms in 2021. Other experts put the final price tag at about $6 billion.
Taxpayers should be worried about costs ballooning past estimates, because blowing more money than budgeted is a government specialty, especially on gun control programs.
Ottawa initially promised that the long-gun registry would cost taxpayers only $2 million. The final tab was more than $2 billion before it was scrapped.
Despite all those costs, the gun confiscation won’t make Canadians safer. And that’s something that law enforcement experts have been saying since the government announced the policy.
That’s because it’s not legal gun owners committing crimes with firearms. And every dollar that the government wastes on this program is a dollar that can’t be used to stop the real problem of gun smuggling.
The union representing RCMP members says Ottawa’s program “diverts extremely important personnel, resources and funding away from addressing the more immediate and growing threat of criminal use of illegal firearms.”
“We know that the gun buyback program is going to have, essentially, zero impact on the crime in Toronto,” said Clayton Campbell, the president of the Toronto Police Association.
And examples from other countries prove the point. New Zealand conducted its own confiscation back in 2019 and collected more than 50,000 banned firearms, but violent gun crime increased in the years afterward.
The failure of the Cape Breton project proves Ottawa’s gun confiscation is a waste of money that won’t make Canadians safer. Instead of pushing forward, Ottawa needs to finally stop limping this scheme along and end it once and for all.
Gage Haubrich is the Prairie director for the Canadian Taxpayers Federation
26-25
Kind of a funny tautology, that law-abiding gun owners don’t commit crimes with guns. And when they do, they are no longer law-abiding.
Not sure if the letter writer is correct in thinking the assault rifles are being ‘confiscated’ when the owners of assault rifles are being recompensed.
Furthermore, major police forces support banning assault rifles. If for no other reason but their own safety.
In Canada, 75% of gun deaths are suicide, 17% are domestic violence, 2% accidents, 5% violent (gang-related) crime. Is it a good idea to keep guns out of homes?
The new legislation is not about “assault rifles”. They are already banned. The new legislation makes “assault style” illegal. Only 16% of suicides involve firearms. Both suicide and domestic violence, in the main, involve “long guns”, like legal rifles and shotguns. Furthermore, studies show that for these acts, when firearms are banned, other methods are substituted, without a reduction in suicide rate.
Let’s dig deeper, here, g&b. Yes, ‘assault’ rifles are already prohibited – military-style, automatic and high-muzzle velocity weapons. ‘Assault-style’ weapons have military-style features like high-capacity magazines, quick reloading, pistol grips and, potentially, rapid fire ability suitable for high-casualty attacks. They are designed to look like ‘assault’ rifles and often designed for rapid engagement or to be concealed. Even some replica’s and toys are being banned so law enforcement won’t feel compelled to shoot kids running around playing with them.
The letter writer is implying that The Man is coming to take your ‘guns’. This is not true and unnecessarily feeds alarm and the American-style paranoia of the authoritarian state and their ‘right’ to bear arms – including military-style arms. It is the sort of paranoid-fever that is surging through the ‘separatist’ crowd.
That 75% of gun-related deaths are suicide or that 16% of suicides are gun related makes no difference. But your statement that suicidal people will find another way is not supported by the organizations that study these things, like Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions and The Harvard School for Public Health. They show that gun ownership dramatically increases a fatal outcome if a person has suicidal thoughts. This is thought to be mainly due to impulsivity (the perennial enigmas as love, money, and sex, as Erdozain writes in One Nation Under Guns) and having an easily accessible firearm. If suicides were to employ another method, per capital suicides would be roughly consistent through a society. However, statistics show that when gun ownership per capital increases, so do suicides per capita. Impulsivity plus accessibility is an unfortunate algebra.
But you are correct in saying that we are talking about the impact of ‘guns’ on society – not, necessarily, ‘assault-style’ weapons. I used the terms correctly, but it is good to be clear.
My question is: Why do people want to own ‘assault-style’ weapons? They are not hunting rifles (though I would not be surprised to hear, that some people take them hunting). Why are ‘law-abiding’ gun owners not satisfied with their hunting rifles (and their restricted handguns)? I support the police associations that wish to remove weapons that ‘look like’ and even sometimes ‘act like’ assault rifles. Then the police would know that when someone handling such a weapon the situation is indeed dangerous.
Please cite the scientific published studies from reputable firms, Not just saying things like “Furthermore, studies show…”.
The Canadian Taxpayers Federation is not reputable, it is just trying to fund raise to pay their rent and the wages of the “CEO” .
Gee Gage Haubrich can you make yourself look any dumber than you already have. My American Relatives have been trying to get this gun stupidity stopped in the U. S. for years or haven’t you noticed how many people have been murdered over the years. These Republicans fans of the Reformers won’t let them. We aren’t interested in seeing it brought to Canada like these Reformers want to do.
I was a hunter for 67 years and my hunting buddies were mostly lawyers and police officers over the years and we aren’t dumb enough to believe the lies these Reformers and American Republicans are feeding the people. Everyone should have the right to bare arms and literally kill anyone they want to that’s how stupid they are. Telling people teachers should be armed is just plain stupid. These are only guns that aren’t legal for hunting and can kill many people in a matter of seconds and need to be destroyed. Assault rifles and Handguns shouldn’t be in the hands of anyone other than a police officer and they aren’t allowed to take them home.
As my police officers friends state using the excuse that “ legal gun owners don’t commit crimes “ is a farce when they are seeing so many crimes created with stolen guns. So why do you fools continue to use it?
I have a nephew who is a police officer in B.C. and his wife is an RCMP Officer and they were in that crowd in Vegas were the manic killed 60 people and wounded 400 others and you don’t think Assault Rifles and handguns shouldn’t be taken off the streets? You can imagine what they think, can’t you, after being involved with it?
When you have idiots like Reformers Danielle Smith and Pierre Poilievre bad mouthing Liberals for trying to make it safer for Canadians and praising Donald Trump for what he is doing , you have a serious problem especially when the Conservatives in Ottawa were smart enough to kick Poilievre out and Albertans were dumb enough to re-elect him, that’s how stupid they are, aren’t they?