There comes a point in almost every Canadian’s life where someone sits you down and tells you that no matter how hard you try, it’s very unlikely that you are going to make it to the NHL.

That same type of tough love needs to be shown to Prime Minister Mark Carney and Public Safety Minister Gary Anadansangree about chances of successfully following through with Ottawa’s gun ban and confiscation program.

Like a hockey player who can’t skate backwards, it’s never been more obvious that its time to throw in the towel. The program is a clear failure, it won’t make Canadians safer, but it will cost taxpayers an untold some of cash.

After banning more than 2,500 hundred different makes and models of firearms over the last six years, the federal government finally launched its confiscation to collect those guns from individual owners with a six-week pilot project in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia.

The government aimed to confiscate 200 firearms during the project. It only collected 25 from 16 different people.

That’s a clear failure.

And in typical federal government fashion, the lack of results doesn’t mean lack of spending.

The government agreed to give at least $149,760 to the Cape Breton Regional Municipality to carry out the confiscation. The government also spent $26,535 in compensation to the owners of the banned guns.

That means the cost to taxpayers for each gun confiscated is about $7,000. If this program rolls out across the country, it’s going to get really expensive, really quickly.

Failing government programs often face legitimate criticism for two reasons: they cost taxpayers too much money or they don’t work.

Ottawa’s gun confiscation is a case where both ring true. Taxpayers will be on the hook for potentially billions of dollars to pay for it and it won’t make Canadians safer.

The first problem is the cost.

The government has committed $742 million to carry out its gun ban and confiscation scheme, according to Budget 2025, but the government has not been transparent on these costs to taxpayers.

The Liberal Party initially said the confiscation would cost $200 million in 2019. The Parliamentary Budget Officer said it will cost up to $756 million to compensate owners for their firearms in 2021. Other experts put the final price tag at about $6 billion.

Taxpayers should be worried about costs ballooning past estimates, because blowing more money than budgeted is a government specialty, especially on gun control programs.

Ottawa initially promised that the long-gun registry would cost taxpayers only $2 million. The final tab was more than $2 billion before it was scrapped.  

Despite all those costs, the gun confiscation won’t make Canadians safer. And that’s something that law enforcement experts have been saying since the government announced the policy.

That’s because it’s not legal gun owners committing crimes with firearms. And every dollar that the government wastes on this program, is a dollar that can’t be used to stop the real problem of gun smuggling.

The union representing RCMP members says 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.”

“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.

And examples from other countries prove the point. New Zealand conducted its own confiscation back in 2019 and collected more than 50,000 banned firearms, but violent gun crime increased in the years afterward.

The failure of the Cape Breton project proves Ottawa’s gun confiscation is a waste money that won’t make Canadians safer. Instead of pushing forward, Ottawa needs to finally stop limping this scheme along and end it once and for all.