Gage Haubrich: The gun ban doesn’t work, Trudeau already knows that

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From the start, experts told the prime minister that his gun ban and buyback would divert resources from fighting crime rather than making Canada safer.

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Instead of changing course, the Trudeau government announced it was diverting even more taxpayer money to its failing gun policy.

And it’s a costly diversion.

The federal government recently announcement An additional 324 models of firearms are now banned and added to the buyback list. This brings the total number of banned brands and models to almost 2,500.

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Even though Ottawa has yet to confiscate a single firearm, the costs have already started to add up for taxpayers. Since 2020, when the ban was first announced, the government has spent $67 million to the program. By the end of the fiscal year, the government should increase that figure is about $100 million, according to government documents.

The projected costs of this project were a problem from the start. In 2019, the government said the buyout would cost taxpayers $200 million. But according to the parliamentary budget officer, the purchase of weapons could cost up to $756 million, not including administrative costs. Other government documents show the buyout is now likely to cost nearly $2 billion.

These costs do not include newly banned firearms. And it appears the government is planning to expand the list even further. This means even more costs for taxpayers.

The Minister of Public Security Dominic Leblanc, responsible for banning firearms, hinted at the press conference, the popular SKS rifle could next be added to the banned list. It is estimated that there are one million of these firearms in Canada.

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That means costs to taxpayers could skyrocket and more people could lose their guns. THE PBO Report estimates that approximately 518,000 guns were banned on the original list. Adding SKS could more than double the $756 million it would cost to confiscate the guns.

The government has already tried to ban SKS. It was Understood in an amendment to Bill C-21 that would have banned it, along with many hunting rifles. The Assembly of First Nations immediately passed an emergency resolution opposing this amendment at the time.

“It’s a tool” said Kitigan Zibi Chief Dylan Whiteduck on the list of rifles that would have been banned. “It’s not a weapon.”

The government backtracked on this amendment. There is no doubt that this measure would face similar resistance from Indigenous hunters if Ottawa were to reimpose it.

Even worse than the cost is the simple fact that the policy does not increase the safety of Canadians. Trudeau banned the initial list of 1,500 guns in 2020, meaning it is illegal to buy, sell or use them. Every year since then, violent gun crime in Canada has increased. increase.

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And international examples confirm this trend. New Zealand led a similar, but more extensive, gun ban and buyback in 2019. New Zealand recorded 1,216 violent gun offenses in 2023. This is 349 more offenses than the year before the buyback .

All this only confirms what the experts have been saying all along: it costs a lot of money, but will not make Canada safer.

The union that represents the RCMP said the buyout “diverts critically important personnel, resources and funding away from combating the more immediate and growing threat of criminal use of illegal firearms.”

“The gun ban doesn’t work” said the president of the Toronto Police Association. “We should focus on the criminals.”

Academics who study the subject also agree.

“Buyback programs are largely ineffective at reducing gun violence, in large part because people who participate in such programs are not likely to use those guns to commit violence. » said Jooyoung Lee, professor at the University of Toronto.

Everyone except the Prime Minister can see the obvious. The costs of this program continue to skyrocket, and taxpayers have every reason to fear that the bill will only get higher. Yet our streets are not safer. Trudeau must abandon this ineffective and costly arms buyback.

National Post

Gage Haubrich is the Prairie Director for the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.

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