Canada’s Bumbling Confiscation Scheme Reportedly Netted ‘Less Than 30’ Firearms in Pilot Program

In a tacit acknowledgement of just how unworkable its gun ban and confiscation program is, Canada’s Liberal government quietly extended the gun amnesty for an additional year, just before it was due to expire on October 30. This is the third time (so far) that the date has been pushed forward.

In another potential indicator of defeat, a veil of secrecy has apparently been drawn over the outcome of the pilot project in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, where the first rollout of the gun confiscation scheme against individual firearm owners occurred. Public Safety Canada, the department with overall responsibility for implementing the gun ban and confiscation, announced the pilot project would run for a two-week period ending on October 15. Further, “[o]nly the first 200 eligible firearms will be accepted for compensation” during the test run, arguably a perverse limitation given the firearms have been banned, as the Liberal government has incessantly maintained, because they are allegedly far too dangerous for civilian possession and use.

The objective of the pilot was to “test the online portal, the collection and destruction process, as well as the system for issuing compensation payments to participants,” but there’s been no official word on how this worked or statistics on how many guns were turned in. The Canadian Shooting Sports Association states, based on uncorroborated information, that the 200-gun limit was wildly off-target as “less than 30” guns were surrendered.

If this is accurate, what makes the under-30-guns total particularly damning is that the pilot took place under the most favorable set-up possible: the Cape Breton Regional Police Chief is the brother-in-law of the Liberal Member of Parliament representing the district (prompting a Conservative MP to snark, “Will the Liberals now admit that the only way they can get police forces to participate [in the gun grab] is to hire their family?”).

Public Safety Minister Gary Anandasangaree (who has his own spectacularly embarrassing disclosures on the gun confiscation scheme) was forced to deny that neither the political nor family relationship had anything to do with Cape Breton’s selection as Ground Zero of the individual confiscation phase.

The expectation of an amnesty extension, another year without criminal liability for possession, may have kept Cape Breton’s gun owners from parting with their lawfully acquired property. The government’s outline of how to submit a claim, though, could have been at least as strong a disincentive, operating on what appeared to be a “disposal first, payment maybe later” basis. As part of the initial screening, gun owners were required to “select a disposal option” (turn the gun in at a scheduled appointment with the local police, or have the gun permanently deactivated by “a business authorized to perform deactivations”), submit their claim, and wait to see whether they had been “approved to proceed.”

Only after this approval had been received could the owner provide their banking information for the compensation to be paid. “Submitting a claim does not guarantee compensation,” but by that point, the gun owner who has followed all of the necessary steps may be left without compensation or a firearm.

Responsible gun owners aren’t the only ones getting defrauded. All of Canada’s taxpayers are funding the gun ban and grab and paying the price for police resources being diverted away from real crimes.

Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Liberal government released its budget last week and the news isn’t good. Revenues are down from last year, government spending is up by almost $40 billion, and the deficit for 2025/2026 is more than double the figure that the government projected.

One obvious cost-cutting measure that the government could have opted for but didn’t was to drop the gun ban and confiscation program, citing a face-saving argument of cutting government waste and unnecessary spending. Instead, Carney’s government has doubled down, allocating a reported $38.7 million more over three years to fund gun grab program.

Taxpayers still have no clear notion of the ultimate price tag. The Canadian Taxpayers Federation, a group that has vocally and consistently called out the ban and confiscation program as a pointless squandering of public money, reportedly filed an access to information request in July 2023 with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police for a breakdown of all projected costs associated with confiscating the banned firearms. Gage Haubrich, the CTF’s Prairie director, states the agency provided a partial answer. It would cost the Pacific Region RCMP $12.6 million to confiscate and destroy banned firearms in that region, but that was the extent of the response. The CTF followed up with a complaint to the federal commissioner responsible for compliance in April 2024 and “the complaint has essentially gone nowhere.” Accordingly, the CTF is “going to court to compel the information commission to do its job and issue a decision on the CTF’s complaint and release the information.”

What has been obvious from the start is that banning the guns of legal consumers would do nothing to enhance public safety. Despite adopting the most extreme gun control laws Canada has ever seen, the Carney-Trudeau Liberals have unleashed a “crime wave” instead, as a statement by Canada’s Conservative Party explains. In less than a decade, the “rate of firearm-related violent crime has surged 29 percent while the number of victims has grown by nearly 19 percent;” violent crime “has skyrocketed by 50 percent, and total incidents of violent gun crime use ha[ve] surged 116 percent.”

The Cape Breton pilot is representative of the chaotic Liberal gun control saga as a whole, yet Canadians are expected to believe that crime is down, the mandatory confiscation law is a really a “voluntary buyback,” and that the bedevilled attempts to implement the gun ban and confiscation are, in the words of Minister Anandasangaree, “not targeting law-abiding gun owners as criminals for being in possession of prohibited firearms” but “about ensuring the safety and security of Canadians.” It’s time for an honest reckoning and an end to this epic government failure.