Gov't/RCMP continue to sow confusion for gun owners

July 31, 2020

Gov't/RCMP continue to sow confusion for gun owners

July 31, 2020

Gun owners across the country are once again left wondering what the RCMP and the Liberal government are trying to accomplish. A recent RCMP website notice claims that the letters gun owners received about their restricted firearms are not actually registration certificate revocations. So what are they?

The RCMP have announced their position on the s.74 issue:

“... a letter was recently sent out to individuals/businesses to inform them that their previously registered restricted firearms are now prohibited and their registration certificates became nullified. This nullification is the result of the legislative change to the Criminal Code Regulations and not the result of any decision by the Registrar to revoke the registration certificates under the Firearms Act. Accordingly, the letter is not a Firearm Registration Certificate Revocation Notice...”

Obviously this does not answer the question of whether or not the revocation of your registration certificates is valid, or if in fact that actually happened (which is very much a live question), but it does add another feature to this unusual landscape.

To be clear, neither the OIC nor the Firearms Act have any mechanism for the alleged “nullification”, so the question is immediately this: by what authority are the RCMP and the Registrar of Firearms saying our registration certificates certs are no longer valid?

Our money is on this: they just made it up and the notice is not only non-compliant, as our legal team has previously written, it’s an outright fabrication.

The Firearm Act reads;

“12.1 A registration certificate may only be issued for a prohibited firearm or a restricted firearm.
2012, c. 6, s. 10
Registration certificate
13 A person is not eligible to hold a registration certificate for a firearm unless the person holds a licence authorizing the person to possess that kind of firearm.”

From there, if you possess something you are not eligible to have, what happens? The Firearm Act does not say.

Term of Registration Certificates;

66 A registration certificate for a prohibited firearm or a restricted firearm expires when
(a) the holder of the registration certificate ceases to be the owner of the firearm; or
(b) the firearm ceases to be a firearm

There is absolutely NO "automatic nullification" on a prohibition, nor is there a provision within the Firearms Act for it.

Is this a way for the RCMP to avoid angry gun owners filing Section 74 challenges? Perhaps.