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Tuesday is the deadline for owners of newly-prohibited firearms to register for the federal buyback program. Saskatchewan’s incoming firearms commissioner, Blaine Beaven, joined The Evan Bray Show to discuss the situation.
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This transcript has been edited for clarity and length.
EVAN BRAY: What is the deadline tomorrow for the federal program?
BLAINE BEAVEN: The federal program — I’m going to use the term buyback for ease of reference — is a confiscation with maybe compensation scheme, and tomorrow is the deadline to declare your firearms with the federal program.
After all the declarations are in, they review them. At last count, they were around 50,000 or so across the country, and they’ll determine who they’re making offers of compensation to.
It’s a little bit like being in The Bachelor or winning a lottery: there’s no guarantee you’ll be happy at the end of the day. We’ve seen some proposals that they might be offering $2 in some cases for a gun, or $400 if you go get it deactivated yourself.
It’ll be interesting to see what comes out from that, because they’ve also been very clear they’re not intending to compensate people in Saskatchewan.
There’s no impediment in Saskatchewan law for you participating in that declaration period and if the federal government does pick your name out of a hat and offer you some money and you’re willing to accept it, then reach out to the Saskatchewan Firearms Office.
In order to comply with Saskatchewan laws around this, we’ll have to have some discussions with the federal government to figure out how the firearm can be seized or picked up properly and destroyed or deactivated, so people will need to reach out to us.
BRAY: Have there been any offers of compensation for people that willingly participated in this program that were appropriate?
BEAVEN: One friend of mine did the the whole declaration process, and provided me with some videos of it, because that might become useful if there is a legal battle later. There’s estimated amounts depending on the information you provide but there’s no offer of compensation yet. The federal government’s been pretty clear they’re not going to make offers until after March 31.
BRAY: Do you think it’s because they they don’t really know how many guns are going to be coming in? Are they holding their cards close because they only have a finite amount of money?
BEAVEN: If you saw that news conference with Nathalie Provost, Secretary of State (Nature) and Gary Anandasangaree, Minister of Public Safety, they said 51,000 firearms, well short of the 136,000 firearms for which the government set aside money when the buyback program opened in January.
The low estimate of affected firearms is closer to a million and there’s estimates that it could even be as much as two million. The 136,000 number is badly false, like we know that there are more than that affected.
And if you think about what’s been declared so far, 51,000 firearms by 26,000 gun owners. So that’s two per, just about, average of two for those 26,000 there’s millions of firearms owners across this country. So if you put out an average of even one, the number of affected firearms is, is quite a bit higher.
I think what the federal government is likely do is push for people to pay for their own deactivations and get reimbursed that way because they don’t want to do the logistical work.
BRAY: What are the rules for lawful firearm owners in the province who don’t want to participate in this but also don’t want to lose their firearms?
BEAVEN: The federal government has the power to declare firearms prohibited. We hear a lot of people ask why the province doesn’t just repeal the gun ban? We don’t have the authority to do that. What we can do is protect your firearms as property and that’s what we’ve done with these most recent amendments.
Likely on May 1 you will be able to log into the provincial program and put in your information about your firearms to see if they’re affected. If they are affected, you can choose to get an appraisal, and if you get an appraisal, we will also provide you with a certificate of exemption that exempts you from prosecution for continuing to possess and store those firearms after Oct. 30, when the amnesty ends.
There’s going to be conditions attached to that, which includes that you have to be seeking compensation, which can mean sending a demand letter to the feds saying you owe me this much money, and waiting for them to pay. Whether they pay or not remains to be seen.
I know that we are going to have some cases going to court on this issue, and they are going to likely challenge the legislation. The provincial government is going to stand up for the legislation. What that’s going to do is allow people not to worry about getting a knock on the door with a police officer with a warrant saying we’re coming to get your guns that you haven’t given up.
That’s not going to happen in Saskatchewan, so long as you engage with the provincial process that we’ve set up, which is about making sure you’re properly compensated.
Now I know that people are going to say they don’t want to be properly compensated and want to keep the guns, and I’m one of those people, but unfortunately we have to work within the law.
That’s the best that we can do, which I think is better than any other province in the country.
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