Why The Buyback Hasn't Happened (And Why It Likely Won't)

“It should be noted that while staffing efforts are underway to grow the team to deliver on all the priorities, current HR pressures and backlogs in issuing security clearances are a challenge, resulting in delays in onboarding.”

According to the Deputy Minister of Public Safety’s Transition Book, this is the reason for the delays in the buyback program’s commencement. Stipulating that the program employed 24 people and had a budget of $5.4M, the October 2022 publication went on to claim that Public Safety hoped to begin the buyback program by the end of last year; targeting business inventories first and hoping to commence individual buybacks in the second half of 2023. 

Obviously, neither came to fruition and instead, the amnesty protecting owners of these newly-prohibited firearms was extended to 2025. That had many thinking the extension may have been political in nature; intended to push the commitment beyond the next election writ, and allow the Liberals to once more campaign on a Conservative promise to reverse these changes. But as our research indicates, it's far more likely the program is simply nowhere near completion.

Because while the Transition Book paints a less-than-rosy picture of the Firearm Buyback Program's successes, other Public Safety documents seem to indicate that even October 2025 may be unrealistically optimistic: According to the Public Safety Developmental Evaluation plan, the buyback program's budget for this fiscal year has increased but not significantly, rising from $5.4M last year, to $10.7M for the 2023-24 fiscal year - and certainly a far cry from the $756M cited by the Parliamentary Budget Officer as what would be required to administrate the program. Likewise, the plan also cites that Public Safety's internal review/audit board intends to evaluate the program's performance in 2026-27, meaning the program is expected to be in operation until at least then. Why does this matter? Because so long as the buyback is still in active operation, the amnesty protecting owners must to; otherwise compliance will drop to 0 as owners realize they will be arrested for turning guns in. Ergo, if the program is going to be evaluated in 2027, it'll likely be running until at least 2026, which means we haven't even seen the last amnesty extension... or have we? But more on that later.

Because there is no clarity to be found date-wise elsewhere, either, it seems. According to Grant & Contribution agreement records, Public Safety Canada has funded agreements with the so-called "opt-in" buyback provinces, agreements that commenced in April 2023, and end March of 2027. But these agreements are not to fund the buyback of firearms, nor do their termination dates indicate anything about the buyback's end date. On the contrary, these are relatively small funding agreements that are intended to support the drafting of more formal agreements (setting out formal legal terms and conditions), by which the federal government will fund the buyback of rifles in these opt-in provinces. Basically, it's the federal government paying the provinces' costs for setting these agreements up. And otherwise, not that it helps? Well the woefully outdated 2022-23 Public Safety Department Plan actually shows declining staff levels working at Community Safety; the result of sunsetting programs, and states that Public Safety will, for the 2022-23 fiscal year, "advance the design and development of a mandatory firearms buyback program." That is, to use a technical term, some properly non-descript fluff and it certainly doesn't indicate a healthy, on-schedule program.

This leads us to the final point: Why this means there likely will not be a buyback at all. And the answer is incredibly simple: It seems highly unlikely that the Liberal government will maintain its mandate past October 2025. Most pundits have cited 2024 as a likely election year, and that was before the Liberals started appearing in headlines alongside words like "freefall," and before the NDP started to put public pressure on the Liberals to fund a Pharmacare program they're reticent to. So, it seems likely that we'll see an election writ before we see a buyback, which based on current polling figures will likely result in a change in government - and hopefully Canada's licensed gun owners and taxpayers can put this whole mess behind us.