Costs for gun ban and buyback continue to balloon, despite not buying a single gun
Taxpayers have already been billed more than $3 million to run the federal government’s office responsible for the gun ban and buyback scheme.
“This is more evidence that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s gun ban and buyback is going be another taxpayer boondoggle,” said Franco Terrazzano, Federal Director of the CTF. “The feds are spending millions of dollars before reimbursing a single gun owner, so it’s a good bet that this bill will keep ballooning.”
The Firearms Buyback Secretariat was created in June of 2020 inside the Department of Public Safety to run the Trudeau government’s gun ban and buyback scheme.
The office cost at least $3.7 million so far, with $2.1 million spent on salaries and $1.6 million spent on operations, according to a statement given to the CTF. The department refused to provide the total budget allocated to the office each year.
No firearms have been purchased yet. The gun ban and buyback scheme has been delayed until October of 2023.
The federal office is currently staffed by 10 bureaucrats with records showing draft plans to hire eight more, costing up to $2 million per year in salaries alone.
The Liberal Party originally said the gun ban and buyback would cost $200 million. However, the Parliamentary Budget Officer estimates reimbursing gun owners will cost up to $756 million. The $756-million estimate does not include administrative or staffing costs.
The National Police Federation, which is the union that represents the RCMP, stated the federal gun ban and buyback will “do very little to address their goal to increase public safety.” The gun ban and buyback “diverts extremely important personnel, resources, and funding away from addressing the more immediate and growing threat of criminal use of illegal firearms,” according to the NPF.
“Trudeau needs to cut his losses and put an end to this ineffective and expensive policy,” said Terrazzano. “The people protecting us say the gun ban and buyback won’t make Canadians safer, and taxpayers don’t need another government program that wastes our money.”