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Saskatoon will be home to the provincial Firearms Ballistics Lab for the next two years, thanks to a newly signed agreement.
The memorandum of understanding between the Saskatoon Police Service and the Saskatchewan Firearms Office means the lab will be housed in police headquarters in Saskatoon.
The firearms office is chipping in $49,000 to help upgrade the facility’s indoor shooting range, and will make additional monthly payments to help cover office space, parking and utilities until the agreement expires on Dec. 31, 2025.
The lab will be home to a wide array of forensic ballistics equipment, the firearms office noted, including a station used to compare spent cartridges to determine whether specific guns have been used in a crime. About $927,000 was set aside for the lab in the 2023-24 provincial budget.
“The Lab will also be able to conduct firearms testing and tracing to determine the history of potentially illegal firearms, which is helpful in situations where firearms have been smuggled into Canada or have had their serial numbers altered,” the office added in a statement.
Christine Tell, Saskatchewan’s minister of corrections, policing and public safety, said the firearms office will work on developing a more permanent home for the lab during the two-year agreement.
“This agreement will significantly improve our ability to conduct important ballistics and firearms testing, which is currently being done by the federal government,” Tell said in a statement.
“This partnership allows us to get a headstart and make use of the ballistics equipment the Firearms Office currently possesses, while also giving them the time they need to develop a more permanent facility to use once the agreement ends.”
The Saskatchewan Firearms Office received a total of about $8.9 million in the recent provincial budget, and the office said that money will also be used for enhanced education and training around firearms licensing and storage, the creation of a Firearms Compensation Committee to determine fair market value of any guns, ammunition or accessories “expropriated by the federal government,” and the creation of a new unit to administer Saskatchewan’s firearms act.
