The federal gun ban and confiscation scheme has always been a mess, but now it’s messier than ever.

Ottawa is delaying enforcement of it’s gun ban and confiscation by yet another year. At the same time, it’s launching a pilot project to try it out in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. Optimism for the test run is low as more and more law-enforcement experts are saying the whole project is a waste of money.

Even the minister responsible let slip his doubts about the scheme.

And when you get into the details, it’s clear the problem is only going to get worse.

After banning more than 2,500 hundred different makes and models of firearms since 2020, the federal government announced that it will finally be launching its gun confiscation scheme for individual firearms owners. Starting with a six-week pilot project in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia.

It might be tough to make the pilot project work.

That’s because the police, academics, licenced gun owners and everyday taxpayers know that targeting lawful firearms owners won’t make Canadians safer.

“It won’t impact crime rates,” said Mount Royal University professor Doug King. “Individuals who have registered firearms are much less likely to commit criminal offences than people who don’t have firearms.”

“We know that the gun buyback program is going to have essentially zero impact on the crime in Toronto,” said Clayton Campbell, the president of the Toronto Police Association.

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

The government’s been ignoring that expert advice, but it also seems stuck on how to proceed.

The government extended the amnesty period, meaning firearms owners will not become criminals if they keep their banned firearms for at least another year.

Public Safety Minister Gary Anandasangaree certainly doesn’t seem to think it will work. In a leaked audio recording, he admitted to knowing that legal gun owners aren’t causing crimes and that municipal police forces likely don’t have the resources to follow through on the project.

Because, like the minister, almost no one thinks the gun ban will work.

The Ontario Provincial Police said it won’t participate in Ottawa’s confiscation scheme. The Barrie police said it has no “current plans” to help the feds. The Hamilton police said it hasn’t talked to the feds about it since 2023. “Ontario police services do not have the resources to attend residential addresses to confiscate previously lawful, but now prohibited, firearms from lawful gun owners,” said a spokesperson for the Ontario government.

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith told Alberta RCMP not to participate in the scheme. Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe passed laws to make the confiscation more difficult in that province.

Governments and police forces have limited resources and Alberta, Saskatchewan and the OPP are rightly assessing that they should not be using those limited resources on a program with zero upside.

All the gun ban will do is deprive licenced gun owners of their property that they took safety tests and passed background checks to acquire.

And it will cost taxpayers a truckload of cash.

The government told Canadians the gun confiscation scheme would cost taxpayers $200 million in 2019. The Parliamentary Budget Officer said it will cost up to $756 million just to compensate owners for their guns. Other experts have put the total cost at more than $6 billion.

After years of Ottawa wasting money and failing to get this program off the ground, this opposition shows why the government needs to throw in the towel on this pointless but increasingly complicated plan.

Sometimes, difficult things are worth doing, but Ottawa’s gun confiscation is becoming more of a Sisyphean task by the minute. All the politicians and bureaucrats in Ottawa appear to be unable to push the boulder of this program up the hill to the finish line.

The government is clearly in over its head. The best course of action for Ottawa and taxpayers is to scrap it before any more money is wasted.