Author: Clayton DeMaine
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan gave personalized engraved pistols to NATO leaders at this week’s NATO summit, but it looks like Western countries’ laws around firearms and accepting gifts exceeding $1,000 mean Prime Minister Mark Carney can’t even use the gift.
As first reported by Reuters, the Prime Minister’s Office said Mark Carney immediately turned over the expensive revolver engraved with his name to the RCMP to be “deactivated.”
During this week’s NATO summit, Erdogan gave each of the NATO leaders a personalized revolver.
According to Reuters, Carney jokingly stated, “It struck me that my gift of maple syrup kind of undermatched” when presented with the Turkish leader’s revolver. The report also notes that the handguns came with up to 500 bullets.
The Prime Minister’s Office noted that the ammunition stayed in Turkey.
“I would like to reassure Canadians - they keep guns away from me,” Carney said at a press conference, noting that the gun was likely to end up at the National War Museum.
Liberal Bill C-21, which received royal assent in December 2023, “the handgun freeze,” makes it illegal to transfer handguns within Canada and to bring new handguns into Canada.
Anyone possessing a prohibited or restricted firearm without a required license is committing an offence in the Criminal Code of Canada.
Meanwhile, section 11 of the federal Conflict of Interest Act means that even if Liberal gun laws weren’t in effect, Carney still couldn’t keep the gift personally unless he was explicitly authorized to do so, as the gift exceeded $1,000.
Reports said UK Prime Minister Kier Starmer, similarly, had to decommission the revolver due to similar laws. And few leaders were able to keep the gift.
Peter Magyar, the Prime Minister of Hungary, posted that he received the “unusual gift” but didn’t indicate whether he would keep it.
Bart De Wever, the Prime Minister of Belgium, allegedly didn’t even know he received the revolver as a gift, which caused some trouble for him when he arrived at a Belgian airport.
“The prime minister was surprised and immediately handed it over to airport police so it could be placed in a secure safe and the matter was handled in accordance with relevant procedures,” a Belgian official said on Thursday.
But billion dollar money, laundering, no problem
I think this is pretty funny. All of the NATO "leaders," except Trump, seem to be apoplectic about receiving a pistol (WITH bullets!) as a gift. They're treating these beautiful engraved guns -- which, while operative, were no doubt intended as display specimins -- like they're radioactive. These "leaders" are not living in the real world. I'm still dumbfounded at the fact that so many (most?) Canadians cannot see what Carney is doing to them. And it will almost certainly be too late for them, and for Canada, by the time a majority of them wake up.