Albertans question need for Liberal recommitment to ‘frustrating’ gun buyback program

The federal liberals are doubling down on a promise to buy back guns in an effort to reduce crime. CTV News Edmonton's Chelan Skulski reports.

If elected, Liberal leader Mark Carney has promised to revamp the Liberal’s gun buyback program to make it more effective.

In Alberta, there remain doubts that the program will work – and why it’s needed at all.

Since May 2020, more than 1,500 models of assault-style firearms have been banned in three rounds of restrictions.

The buyback program for gun owners and businesses was announced to reimburse owners of those guns, but it has yet to fully get off the ground.

“There’s so many questions, and no answers,” said gun shop owner Chris Gubersky. “We’ve been at this five-plus years and still no answers.”

Gubersky said it’s been difficult trying to run his businesses now knowing what models might be next on the government’s chopping block.

“It’s hard to do business when you don’t know what your future is going to be,” he added. “I can deal with highs and lows in the economy, but when you add the government’s decisions into that, different law changes, all of that, it’s really hard to predict what’s going to happen.”

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The buyback program for businesses has been open since the end of 2024. The Government of Canada website says businesses will have until the end of April to be compensated for guns banned in 2020.

As of March, 7,299 claims from businesses have been processed by Ottawa.

Applications for guns banned in 2024 and 2025 will open at a later date, and the website said buybacks for individuals are expected to open “later in 2025.”

Ahead of the 2025 federal election, Carney is promising to make changes to the program to get guns bought back – though no details have been given on exactly how that will happen.

Doug King, a professor of justice studies at Mount Royal University, said he’s interested to see how the Liberal leader plans to do that, given past hiccups in the program.

“There was a failed idea by the Trudeau government that they would have the post office do that, which conjures up enormously interesting images of grandma going to the post office to send off a Christmas gift while behind her is a guy with an AK-47,” King said.

King said there are occasions where a legally owned gun is used in a crime, and other instances where legal guns are stolen and make their way into the illegal stream.

However, he said most guns being used in crimes are coming into the country illegally or are “ghost firearms,” guns being made illegally using 3D-printed parts.

“To argue that (the gun ban is) a way of reducing crime is political. It has nothing to do with the real realities of what the world is,” he said.

Gubersky agrees and points to rising gun crime across Canada before, and since, the first round of gun bans in 2020.

Statistics Canada data shows firearm-related violent crimes have increased 55 per cent since 2013, rising each year between 2018 and 2022, when it hit a 14-year-high. In 2023, it dropped by 1.7 per cent.

“It’s extremely frustrating, because our federal government has vetted every single gun owner in Canada, and now they’re basically saying you cannot use this product for hunting, sport, shooting, any of those practices,” Gubersky said.

The Alberta government has also been vocal in its opposition to the gun ban, and it was approved as an intervenor in at least six lawsuits against the federal government’s gun ban.

“Alberta’s government continues to oppose the federal government’s false premise that licenced law-abiding firearms owners are responsible for increasing firearms violence, rather than criminals,” said Justice Minister Mickey Amery in a statement.

The Canadian government said on its website more than 19,000 non-restricted makes and models, equating to more than 127,000 variations of firearms, remain available for hunting and sport shooting in Canada.

With files from CTV News Edmonton’s Chelan Skulski