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Justice

Ottawa’s gun buyback is rightly falling apart

Published

6 months ago

5 minute read

From the Canadian Taxpayers Federation

Author: Gage Haubrich

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s gun ban and buyback policy is running out of steam.

And it hasn’t even left the station.

The buyback is broken. Law-abiding firearms owners don’t want to lose their guns. It doesn’t go far enough for gun-control advocates. And taxpayers don’t want to pick up the massive bill.

“It’s a waste of Canadian’s money,” said a spokesperson for PolyRemembers, a prominent gun-control advocacy group. “We are not reducing the risk level. It’s just for appearances.”

Instead, PolyRemembers wants the government to go further and ban even more models of firearms.

But if the recommendation is to ban more guns, the solution brings a lot more problems.

And Ottawa already tried that. The federal government tried to dramatically expand the list of guns banned with committee amendments. One of the additions included the semi-automatic SKS rifle, of which there are estimated to be more than 500,000 in Canada.

After the introduction of amendments to Bill C-21 that would have seen many common hunting rifles banned, the Assembly of First Nations passed an emergency resolution opposing the ban.

“It’s a tool,” said Kitigan Zibi Chief Dylan Whiteduck about the list of rifles to be banned. “It’s not a weapon.”

“No government has a right to take that away from us and regulate that,” said said Federation of Sovereign Indigenous Nations Vice-Chief Heather Bear. “That is our job as mothers, grandmothers, grandfathers, and hunters

The government backed down and removed the amendments.

Expanding the buyback to include even more firearms would mean more resistance from current firearms owners and a larger cost to buyback even more guns.

The government says the aim of the ban is to keep Canadians safe, but the evidence shows that it’s unlikely to help, even if it was expanded to include more firearms.

The federal government announced a ban on 1,500 types of what it called “assault-style” firearms in May 2020. It promised to provide “fair compensation” to gun owners whose firearms it confiscates.

New Zealand tried a gun ban and buyback program that was more far reaching than Ottawa’s, banning almost all semi-automatic firearms, not only so-called “assault style” rifles.

It didn’t work.

During the decade before the buyback, according to data from the New Zealand Police, violent firearm offences averaged 932 a year in New Zealand. In 2019, the year of the buyback, there were 1,142 offences. In 2022, the number of offences was 1,444.

New Zealand’s buyback wasn’t cheap either. Costs to administer the program were more than double the initial estimates.

Experts in Canada have seen enough to know the policy is a failure.

The National Police Federation, the union that represents the RCMP, says Ottawa’s buyback, “diverts extremely important personnel, resources, and funding away from addressing the more immediate and growing threat of criminal use of illegal firearms.”

And it’s a lot of funding and resources.

In total, estimates show that Trudeau’s scheme could cost taxpayers up to $756 million to buyback the guns, according to the Parliamentary Budget Officer. That doesn’t even include the administration costs – it’s just the cost of compensating firearms owners.

Instead of taking away firearms from Canadians, that’s enough money to pay for the average salaries of 1,000 police officers for more than seven years.

The government has a history of ballooning costs for these types of programs. The government initially promised the long-gun registry would cost taxpayers only $2 million. The final tab was over $2 billion. The registry was scrapped by the Harper government and stayed scrapped under the Trudeau government.

If those were the overruns just to register the guns, how much money would the federal government waste trying to confiscate them?

Ottawa’s buyback has already cost taxpayers $67 million since 2020. Not a single gun has been “bought back” yet.

It’s time for Ottawa to cancel its gun ban and buyback. Because right now, all it looks set to do is cost taxpayers a boatload of money without making Canadians safer.

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Justice

Democracy watchdog calls for impartial prosecution of Justin Trudeau

Published on March 25, 2025

By

From LifeSiteNews

By Anthony Murdoch

Democracy Watch asked that an independent prosecutor be appointed to look over evidence it provided to get permission to carry out a private prosecution of Trudeau’s role in the SNC-Lavalin affair.

One of Canada’s most well-respected democratic watchdog groups says the Ontario government should organize for an impartial prosecutor to investigate former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s involvement in the SNC-Lavalin affair.  

In a letter dated March 21 written to Ontario’s Attorney General Doug Downey, watchdog Democracy Watch asked directly that an independent prosecutor be appointed to look over evidence from its recent Ontario Court of Justice application to get approval to go ahead with a private prosecution of Trudeau’s role in the 2019 scandal. 

“The RCMP (Royal Canadian Mounted Police) did a very superficial investigation into the Trudeau Cabinet’s obstruction of the prosecution of SNC-Lavalin,” wrote lawyer Duff Conacher, co-founder of Democracy Watch, on behalf of the group’s board of directors.

Conacher noted that the RCMP “didn’t even interview many witnesses or try to obtain key secret Cabinet communication records, and buried the investigation with an almost two-year delay, and then made a behind-closed-doors, very questionable decision not to prosecute anyone.” 

SNC-Lavalin, which now goes by the name “AtkinsRéalis,” in 2019 pleaded guilty to fraud in a Québec Provincial Court and was hit with a $280 million fine. Company executives also admitted that they had paid $47.7 million in bribes to get contracts in Libya. 

In October 2023, Canadian Liberal MPs on the ethics committee voted to stop the RCMP from testifying about the SNC-Lavalin bribery scandal. 

In June 2023, LifeSiteNews reported that the RCMP denied it was looking into whether Trudeau and his cabinet committed obstruction of justice concerning the SNC-Lavalin bribery scandal. 

In its letter, Democracy Watch called up Downey to strike a committee comprised of persons without political party ties to choose an impartial lawyer to be an Independent Special Prosecutor. This prosecutor would review all the evidence and then make a public decision about Trudeau’s involvement in the affair.  

“The RCMP lacks independence from the Prime Minister and Cabinet ministers who handpick the RCMP Commissioner and deputy commissioners and division heads through a secretive process, and they all serve at the pleasure of the Cabinet so they are vulnerable to political interference, which is likely part of the reason the RCMP rolled over and let Trudeau off,” noted Conacher.

Conacher also stated that a public inquiry was needed to see why the RCMP “tried to cover up its investigation” and chose not to prosecute.  

Retired judge also says Trudeau should be prosecuted  

SNC-Lavalin was faced with charges of corruption and fraud concerning about $48 million in payments made to Libyan government officials between 2001 and 2011. The company had hoped to be spared a trial and have its prosecution deferred.

However, in 2019, then-Attorney General Jody Wilson-Raybould did not go along with the request and contended that both Trudeau and his top Liberal officials had inappropriately applied pressure on her for four months to directly intervene in the criminal prosecution of the group.

Jen Danch of Swadron Associates law firm will be representing Democracy Watch for its application, with Wayne Crookes, founder of Integrity B.C., being a key supporter of it.  

Of interesting note is that the application includes an opinion from an unnamed retired superior court justice who also supports the prosecution effort.  

“There are reasonable and probable grounds to believe that the Prime Minister committed the offence of Obstruction of Justice under s. 139(2) of the Criminal Code and possibly the offence of Breach of Trust by a Public Official under s. 122 of the Criminal Code,” wrote the judge. 

“The facts outlined by the Ethics Commissioner and the evidence of Ms. Wilson-Raybould at the House Committee on Justice indicate that the Prime Minister and his staff set out to interfere in the prosecution of SNC-Lavalin by trying to stop the prosecution and replace an apparently properly founded prosecution with a less onerous process that would avoid the consequences of a conviction for SNC-Lavalin.”  

At this time, there will be a hearing in Ottawa on March 28 where a judge will decide procedural processes regarding how or if the prosecution will be allowed to continue.  

Last year, the RCMP confirmed it never talked with Trudeau or was able to view secret cabinet records before declining to levy charges.

As for the initial investigation concerning SNC-Lavalin, Wilson-Raybould testified in early 2019 to Canada’s justice committee that she believed she was moved from her justice cabinet posting to veterans’ affairs due to the fact she did not grant a request from SNC-Lavalin for a deferred prosecution agreement rather than a criminal trial. 

Of note is that a criminal conviction would have banned the company from landing any government contracts for 10 years. 

Trudeau flat-out denied it was being investigated by the RCMP. 

Less than four years ago, Trudeau was found to have broken the federal ethics laws, or Section 9 of the Conflict of Interest Act, for his role in pressuring Wilson-Raybould. 

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Energy

Jury: Greenpeace liable for hundreds of millions in damages over pipeline project protests

Published on March 19, 2025

By

The scene outside the county courthouse in Mandan, North Dakota, where a jury held Greenpeace liable for hundreds of millions of dollars in damages over its support of sometimes violent protests of the Dakota Access Pipeline.

From The Center Square

By Morgan Sweeney

A North Dakota jury on Wednesday found environmental activist group Greenpeace liable for hundreds of millions of dollars in damages for its activities related to protests of construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline.

Dallas-based Energy Transfer sued Greenpeace over the sometimes violent protests that delayed construction of the pipeline by five months, costing the company lost profits and shareholder value.

A trial over the civil lawsuit began in February and concluded Wednesday, on the second day of deliberations.

Energy Transfer subsidiary Dakota Access LLC installed the roughly 1,200-mile pipeline running from North Dakota to Illinois in 2016 and 2017. In April 2016, a small group of Sioux set up Sacred Stone Camp, a camp to protest the installation of the pipeline under the river on unceded treaty land for fear that the pipeline could leak and contaminate the river and water supply. They also said the pipeline would disrupt sacred burial grounds and other culturally relevant sites.

With funding and other support from environmental activist group Greenpeace and others, the protest grew and eventually attracted international media attention, especially when clashes with law enforcement became violent. Over 100,000 people descended on rural North Dakota in less than a year, many from other states and possibly some from abroad, according to local residents.

Energy Transfer sued Greenpeace, blaming it for the escalation of the protests that delayed completion of the project by five months. The company says the delay cost them lost profits and shareholder value. It sued Greenpeace for $300 million.

Greenpeace maintained its primary involvement in the protests was sending indigenous nonviolent direct action trainers, camping supplies and a biodiesel-powered solar truck to the site and that the lawsuit against it was an attack on First Amendment rights.

This is a developing story.

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