Ottawa refusing to answer basic questions about gun grab boondoggle
Liberals deny taxpayer advocacy group full extent of gun confiscation program following access-to-information request.
Author: Quinn Patrick
The cost of the Trudeau Liberals’ controversial gun confiscation program has skyrocketed from $200 million to a staggering $756 million, prompting the Canadian Taxpayers Federation to demand answers on the ballooning price tag.
“Ottawa is asking Canadians to fund a massive firearm confiscation program, but when taxpayers ask the most basic question, like how much it will cost, the government refuses to provide a straight answer,” CTF general counsel Devin Drover told Juno News on Monday.
“That is not transparency, that is a cover-up. If the government is confident in this policy, it should be willing to show Canadians the full price tag instead of hiding behind a last-minute secrecy claim.”
The taxpayer watchdog first filed an access-to-information request for projected costs of the federal firearm confiscation program in July 2023, with Ottawa releasing partial records the following January.
The records only revealed the RCMP’s estimated costs for its Pacific Region, which totalled $12.6 million for the confiscation and destruction of the newly prohibited firearms.
However, the government refused to release the projected costs for the remaining RCMP divisions.
The CTF responded by filing a complaint with the Office of the Information Commissioner in April 2024 and received no update for over a year.
This prompted the group to file a mandamus application to force the commissioner to complete the long-delayed investigation.
The commissioner then responded with a report accepting a new claim from the Carney government that alleged further records were being withheld under cabinet confidence—a reason not previously cited.
The CTF is now requesting that the Federal Court review that determination and rule that the records are not protected by cabinet confidence.
What is known is that the cost of the program has skyrocketed since its 2019 inception, with $742 million allocated for its continuation in the Liberals’ Budget 2025.
The Parliamentary Budget Officer estimated that the figure would cover compensation for the confiscated firearms, but was unlikely to cover the cost of actually carrying out the program.
Meanwhile, other organizations, such as the Fraser Institute, placed the total cost of the program at roughly $6 billion.
In August, the head of Toronto’s Police Association called the program a “waste of resources” after Ottawa reaffirmed its commitment to confiscate legal firearms.
Toronto law enforcement states that 90 per cent of all guns seized in crimes can be traced to the U.S., with the origin of the remainder being too difficult to source. However, crimes in the GTA almost never involve legal firearms.
“Ottawa’s gun grab is a waste of money that won’t improve public safety. Ottawa should not be hiding costs from the taxpayers who are being forced to pay them,” CTF Prairies director Gage Haubrich told Juno News. “Instead of wasting time trying to hide the true cost of this scheme from taxpayers, Ottawa should listen to taxpayers and law enforcement experts and finally scrap this ineffective program before another dollar is wasted on it.”
The latest application was filed by the CTF earlier this month.