From the Canadian Taxpayers Federation

By Gage Haubrich

Even worse than the cost is the simple fact that the policy isn’t making Canadians safer. Trudeau banned the initial list of 1,500 guns in 2020, meaning that it’s illegal to buy, sell or use them. In every year since, violent gun crime in Canada has increased.

Right from the beginning, experts have told the prime minister that his gun ban and buyback will divert resources away from fighting crime rather than making Canada safer.

Instead of changing course, the Trudeau government announced it’s diverting even more taxpayers’ money to its failing gun policy policy.

And it’s an expensive diversion.

The federal government recently announced an additional 324 models of firearms are now prohibited and being added to the buyback list. That brings the total makes and models banned to almost 2,500.

Even though Ottawa hasn’t confiscated a single gun yet, costs have already begun to pile up for taxpayers. Since 2020, when the ban was first announced, the government has spent $67 million on the program. By the end of the fiscal year the government is likely to increase that number to about $100 million, according to government documents.

The projected costs of this scheme have been a problem from the start. In 2019, the government  said the buyback would cost taxpayers $200 million. But according to the Parliamentary Budget Officer, buying back the guns could cost up to $756 million, not including administrative costs. Other government documents show that the buyback is now likely to cost almost $2 billion.

Those costs do not include the newly banned firearms. And it looks like the government has plans to expand the list even further. That means even more costs to taxpayers.

Minister of Public Safety Dominic Leblanc, who is charge in charge of the gun ban, hinted during the press conference the popular SKS rifle might be added to the ban list next. There are estimated to be a million of those firearms in Canada.

That means the costs to taxpayers could soar and even more people could lose their guns. The  PBO report estimates that there were about 518,000 firearms banned on the original list. Adding the SKS could more than double the projected $756 million it would cost to confiscate the guns.

The government tried to ban the SKS before. It was included in an amendment to Bill C-21 that would have seen it banned along with a lot of hunting rifles. The Assembly of First Nations immediately passed an emergency resolution opposing this amendment at the time.

“It’s a tool,” said Kitigan Zibi Chief Dylan Whiteduck about the list of rifles that would have been banned. “It’s not a weapon.”

The government backed down on that amendment. There is no doubt it would encounter similar resistance from Indigenous hunters if Ottawa reimposed it.

Even worse than the cost is the simple fact that the policy isn’t making Canadians safer. Trudeau banned the initial list of 1,500 guns in 2020, meaning that it’s illegal to buy, sell or use them. In every year since, violent gun crime in Canada has increased.

And international examples confirm the pattern. New Zealand conducted a similar, but more extensive, gun ban and buyback in 2019. New Zealand had 1,216 violent firearm offenses in 2023. That’s 349 more offences than the year before the buyback.

All of this only confirms what experts have said from the beginning: This cost a lot of money, but won’t make Canada safer.

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

“The gun ban is not working,” said the president of the Toronto Police Association. “We should focus on criminals.”

Academics who study the subject also agree.

“Buyback programs are largely ineffective at reducing gun violence, in large part because the people who participate in such programs are not likely to use those guns to commit violence,” said University of Toronto professor Jooyoung Lee.

Everyone but the prime minister can see the obvious. The costs for this program keep ballooning and taxpayers have every reason to worry the tab is only getting bigger. Yet our streets aren’t safer. Trudeau must scrap this ineffective and expensive gun buyback.

From LifeSiteNews

By Anthony Murdoch

Former finance minister learned of Trudeau’s decision to replace her before she quit: report

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was planning to replace now-former Minister of Finance Chrystia Freeland with globalist-linked former central banker Mark Carney, according to insiders.

At least two inside sources, as reported by the Globe and Mail, said Freeland, who quit as finance minister Monday, learned on a Zoom call last Friday from Trudeau that Carney, the former Bank of Canada and Bank of England governor, would take over her job.

The sources noted that Trudeau told Freeland he had lost confidence in her and the job was going to Carney. She was to be offered another role but considered it a demotion. However, Carney did not accept the job offer from Trudeau after Freeland resigned Monday, sources indicated.

According to the sources who remain confidential, it is not clear whether Carney had accepted a job offer to join the Trudeau government. However, sources close to the former head banker said he did not want to be a part of the government.

The move to replace Freeland with an unelected MP such as Carney would have been highly unusual.

Freeland on Monday sent shockwaves through Canada’s political circles after she announced her resignation from the Liberal cabinet, revealing that she did so after Trudeau asked her to step down as finance minister and move into a different position.

Her public resignation letter blasted Trudeau’s economic direction and apparent lack of willingness to work as a team player with the nation’s premiers.

Calls for Trudeau to resign intensified after Freeland stepped down.

The most recent polls show a Conservative government under its leader Pierre Poilievre would win a super majority were an election held today.

As for Carney, as reported by LifeSiteNews, in October, rumors began to swirl that Carney had  again hinted he was planning on diving into Canadian politics amid demands that Trudeau step down as PM.

Carney has close ties in working with the World Economic Forum (WEF) on many files. He also  supports globalist-backed energy regulations such as Canada’s punitive carbon tax.

As noted by LifeSiteNews, Carney may be even more extreme than Trudeau on the carbon tax after he rebuked the prime minister for exempting home heating oil from the carbon tax in some provinces.

Carney works for Brookfield Asset Management and the United Nations special envoy on climate action.

Critics say the World Economic Forum is behind the socialist “Great Reset” agenda of which Trudeau and some of his cabinet, including Freeland, are involved.

Freeland’s resignation not only sent shockwaves through Ottawa’s political circles but drew the attention of U.S. President-elect Donald Trump. Earlier this week, he did not hold back in celebrating her departure, saying the “toxic” second-in-command will “not be missed.”