TheGunBlog.ca — Canada’s Liberal Party-led administration said it’s “very much on track” to begin its mass gun confiscations against government-licensed firearm users that it had aimed to complete 2.5 years ago.
Confiscations To Begin By Mid-November
Dominic LeBlanc, the Liberal minister overseeing the crackdown, said seizures from businesses will begin “in the next month or month and a half,” he told a media briefing yesterday.
He said the confiscations targeting individuals will begin next year, according to a CPAC video of his briefing on YouTube.
Why It Matters
- The Liberals have extended their confiscation deadline twice and it’s on track to fail, marred by massive grassroots and institutional opposition, plus legislative and logistical obstacles.
- They criminalized the lawful owners of many popular rifles and shotguns in May 2020, aiming to complete their confiscations by April 2022.
- They have failed to meet their own timelines for every step of their crackdown. It remains one of the biggest suppressions of honest citizens by any democracy in history outside of war.
Following are LeBlanc’s comments to the media as transcribed by TheGunBlog.ca.
LeBlanc Comments to Media
Reporter: Minister, while we’ve got you here as well too, last year there was talk of the gun buyback having a bit more concrete update in fall 2024. We’re now into fall 2024. We’ve seen $67 million spent on the program, but no guns bought back. What’s going on there?
LeBlanc: So the good news is we’re just at the beginning of the fall, actually, the summer just ended. I think I understand your impatience. I share that impatience.
The good news is that those concrete steps that we spoke about in terms of buying back, retrieving, and destroying, disposing of those military-style assault weapons that have no place on the streets of Canada, that will begin in the next month or month and a half.
We’ll have more information, those concrete details that I know you’re looking forward to, in the coming weeks, but we’re very much on track to fulfill that obligation we made to Canadians.
A lot of work has been done. Those expenditures were precisely so that we can meet the obligations we made to Canadians in terms of those timelines, and I’m not pessimistic at all.
Reporter: [Inaudible] buyback process to begin within the next month to month and a half?
LeBlanc: I will be announcing the details of the first phase of the program that will begin this fall as planned. So you shouldn’t be pessimistic at all. We’re very much on track in terms of those timelines.
Mr. Duclos and I have done a lot of work in this regard, and I look forward to providing those details in the coming weeks.
But to reassuring you that the commitments we made about starting to retrieve, buy back, and dispose of those guns this fall is very much on track.
And the second phase of the program, as we said, will roll out. That’s the individual buyback from Canadian gun owners that will begin exactly as we said in 2025.
So I’m not pessimistic about our ability to effectively deliver that program.