Gun Ban Costing $25,000 Per Firearm

With the deadline to participate in Public Safety Canada’s “Assault-Style Firearms Compensation Program” (ASFCP) one month away, somewhere between just 1.6 and 6 percent of newly prohibited firearms in circulation have been declared, at an eye-watering cost to the taxpayer of over $25,000 per firearm.

According to figures released by the government, the program has seen 32,000 firearms declared since it was formally launched on January 17, with the vast majority of those coming from Ontario (13,219), British Columbia (7,368), and Quebec (5,539). 

For context, verifiable estimates produced by the Canadian Small Arms and Ammunition Association, an organization that represents the Canadian firearms industry, put the number of firearms prohibited by then-Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in May of 2020 at somewhere north of 518,000. More recent estimates produced by the Canadian Coalition for Firearms Rights, which incorporate the two additional gun bans announced in 2024 and 2025, puts the total number of impacted firearms at over 2 million.

Meanwhile, documented program costs now total $800M. This includes $673.4M earmarked by Public Safety for the ASFCP since 2021, and a further $126.6M spent by the RCMP over 2024 and 2025 in support of the same. But notably absent from this sum are the costs accrued by more than a dozen partner agencies that have also contributed to the program, including significant contributions by the Justice Department and Public Service and Procurement Canada, as well as the costs incurred by Public Safety in the period from the program’s introduction in May of 2020 to the beginning of the follow fiscal year in April 2021. 

This is all to say that the current known, documented cost to the taxpayer of $25,000 per firearm declared is a baseline figure, with the realized, but undocumented cost being even higher. Moreover, Public Safety Canada indicated that it expected to pay out an average of $1,800 per firearm in compensation, meaning that the program’s current administrative cost per firearm is $23,200 - over 13 times that of the average compensation amount.

And gun owners aren’t the only ones refusing to participate in the program - over half the country’s provincial and territorial governments have publicly stated that they will not be participating in the ASFCP, with many more municipal police forces and organizations stating the same, including the Canadian Association of the Chiefs of Police, who stated: “The program may not align with current policing priorities, including the illegal importation, trafficking, smuggling, and criminal use of firearms. For this reason, police services remain focused on disrupting criminal networks and preventing crime by deploying limited resources where they will have the greatest and most immediate impact on public safety."

Update - 7 March 2026: A recent follow-up article published by the National Post cites a slightly lower figure of $24,000 per firearm, causing some questions about the discrepancy between the figures above and those provided by the National Post. The cause of this discrepancy is that the federal government published updated quarterly financial reports for Public Safety and the RCMP in the days between this article's publication and the National Post's. Below is a breakdown of both departments' annual spending, with sources, utilizing the latest quarterly financial reports available (for the period ending Dec. 31, 2025):

Public Safety

2021-2023: 51.6M (Order Paper question is source)

2024: 30.4 budgeted in the Main Estimates, then another 33.8M provided by the TB on Supplementary Estimates A (https://www.canada.ca/en/treasury-board-secretariat/services/planned-government-spending/supplementary-estimates/supplementary-estimates-a-2024-25.html#ToC6) and another $41.7M in Supplementary Estimates B (https://www.canada.ca/en/treasury-board-secretariat/services/planned-government-spending/supplementary-estimates/supplementary-estimates-b-2024-25.html#ToC6) for a total of $105.9M.

2025: Easiest way to get this sum is through Public Safety's latest Quarterly Financial Report, as it reports on total *increase* in spending authorities over last year by cost centre, which is $387.9M above last year - which added to the pre-existing spending authorities established last year brings a total of$493.8M this year (new spending last year: 61.9M in expenditures, 319.2 in G&Cs, and $6.8M in transfer payment expenses incurred by the ASFCP)

Total Public Safety bill: $651.3M

RCMP

2021-2023: $10.2M (Order Paper question is source)

2024: Order paper says $1.8M, from start of fiscal year to Sept. But year-end quarterly report says "Increase of $15.7 million to advance the collection of banned assault-style firearms." So if 2023-2024 fiscal was $8.5M as reported on the order paper, then the RCMP actually ended 2024 spending $15.7M than that, meaning $24.2M.

2025: Quarterly financial report ending Dec 31, 2025 indicates another increase, of $61.4M, over previous year, so $85.6M

Total RCMP bill: $128.5M

The above does not include any costs incurred by the program from when it was announced in May 2020 to April 2021, nor does it include the costs incurred by any of the dozen or so partner agencies that have contributed to the program (including SSC, TBS, ESDC, PSPC, Justice, Privacy, Cyber Canada, etc), nor does it include any of costs likely related to the ASFCP but not directly attributable, such as the roughly $90M in new funding the RCMP have sought over the last couple years for the Canadian Firearms Program.

It is also unlikely to include the bulk of the costs incurred by the confiscation and destruction of declared firearms, as the program's declaration period ends on the same day as the federal government's fiscal year, and with just three weeks remaining, reports from owners who have participated in the program indicate that nearly none of the 32,000 declared firearm have been collected and none appear to have been destroyed.