This is a critically important message for the Canadian media.

While the admissions of Canada's minister of public safety last week weren't shocking to those who understand the motivations behind the government's buyback, what was discovered during their technical briefing was far worse.

The Canadian Coalition for Firearm Rights attended the government's “Buyback Program” technical briefing on September 23rd. In this briefing, Rod Giltaca & Tracey Wilson of the CCFR were informed of the following:

That the government intends to open an online portal for gun owners to declare both the firearms the government is aware of (restricted and therefore registered) and the ones they aren't (previously non-restricted).

The government intends to only compensate for a fraction of the firearms currently in circulation.

Assumingly, the government intends to create a race among gun owners to register their previously non-restricted firearms in hopes that they'll be compensated before the budget runs out.

That at this point, it seems the government intends to withhold whether or not licensed gun owners will be compensated for their firearms (as promised), only to be notified once their property is received by the government.

The government has allocated a minuscule budget and intends only to compensate gun owners for less than 13,000 individual previously non-restricted firearms.

The quantity of these firearms in Canada could be estimated at over a million. No one really knows because these firearms are not registered, but the government is fully aware of the minimum number in circulation as records have been kept by import Canada since 2002.

They are also fully aware that licensed gun owners will distrust the entire process, and most will not comply as it will be seen as theft. For five and a half years the Liberals promised that those who did nothing wrong would be fairly compensated for the prohibition of their lawfully-owned property and the government’s decisions on policy. This non-compliance is terrible for everyone involved for many reasons.

The Numbers

These numbers are critically important to understanding how outrageous the government's plan is.

Including all three bans via order in Council and additional bans via the RCMP designating many firearms as variants, the total number of models affected sits at around 3,000.

Most of these models have been available for decades, some for over 40 years. During the technical briefing, the government revealed that this is a capped program, meaning it will pay out a defined amount (verified by email from public safety below) in total and no more. At that point, the amnesty will end.

This total budget includes the staff of 152 people working on the project, any payouts to law enforcement for running some aspect of the program, the compensation for the firearms including the retail buyback and more.

IMPORTANT, concerning the number of firearms in circulation versus what the government is offering are as follows:

There are roughly 126,000 restricted firearms in circulation. These are registered and include AR-15s and a variety of other firearms based on barrel length or overall length.

The total number of firearms they said they have budgeted to compensate for is roughly 152,000.

This leaves 26,000 firearms. If you subtract the roughly 13,000 Firearms they have "bought back" from retailers, that leaves roughly 13,000 firearms that they believe they can afford to compensate licensed gun owners for out of the possible 1,000,000 + on the low end in circulation.

The government is fully aware that the myriad of groups that attended the briefing will inform gun owners of the reality of this program and that chances are incredibly high that the government will pay nothing to those who disclose what firearms they have.

This begs the question whether the government is actuality hoping the Canadians do not hand these guns in. They are putting gun owners in an impossible position, turn their guns in for free or become a criminal. The only other feasible option is to have their firearms deactivated at $400 to $700 per firearm at their own cost.

This story only becomes more bizarre when you consider the government knows that there are likely more than a million of these guns out there, and yet they offer to pay for 13,000 of them. If they had come up with a more rational number, even if it was still too low, this program would have come across as legitimate. So, the question is “really, what’s going on here?”, and that’s a question we need the Canadian media to ask them.

They know there will be mass non-compliance both because what they are doing is morally reprehensible, and they know licensed, law-abiding gun owners will view it the same way.

The story becomes even worse considering that the government was presented the option of grandfathering, which the government has done many times before and would have cost the government absolutely nothing.

This is a very serious story with very serious ramifications. Please take the time to inform Canadians as we are all stakeholders in this.

Below you will find the email from Public Safety that was mentioned above. You will also find some suggested questions Canadians need answers to.

For more information or interview requests, please contact the CCFR's representatives below:

Rod Giltaca
CEO & Executive Director
Canadian Coalition for Firearm Rights
rod.giltaca@ccfr.ca
(Resides in the Pacific Time zone, Vancouver)

Tracey Wilson
Vice President of Public Relations
Canadian Coalition for Firearm Rights
tracey.wilson@ccfr.ca
(Resides in the Eastern time zone, Ottawa)

Message from Public Safety

From: FCP Secretariat/ Secrétariat PIAF (PS/SP) fcpsecretariat-secretariatpiaf@ps-sp.gc.ca
Sent: September 29, 2025 9:45 AM
To: Tracey Wilson tracey.wilson@ccfr.ca
Subject: RE: one quick question

Unclassified | Non classifié

Hi Ms. Wilson,
Thank you for attending Public Safety’s Technical Briefing on the Assault-Style Firearms Compensation Program (ASFCP).

The total funding of $742 million includes all amounts allocated since 2020, which marks the beginning of the initial prohibition. It covers compensation, as well as funding for collection by police, the IT system, the call centre, and other operational costs. The final report on the total cost of the Assault-Style Firearms Compensation Program will be available at the end of the program. Please note that compensation for validated claims may also include costs for deactivation of eligible firearms.

Thank you,

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Important Questions

• For 5 1/2 years the government has committed to paying gun owners for their firearms, why is it now you only commit to paying for around 13,000 of them when we know there's well over 1,000,000 in circulation?
  o What do you expect licensed gun owners to do?
  o How is that fair to anybody?
• It seems like the government doesn’t want compliance with this program. Why don't you just pay for all the firearms that gun owners are legally obligated to surrender Like you promised?
• Did the government reach out to Import Canada to figure out how many of these newly prohibited firearms are in circulation? Data on all that has been available since 2002, correct?
• You mentioned that gun owners can have their firearms deactivated if they don't want to be paid for them and that the government would cover that deactivation, so if gun owners aren't going to get paid for their firearms and they don't want to give them to the government for free, does that mean they'll have to pay $400 to $700 per gun to have them deactivated at their own cost for all of this?
• Why didn't you go for the grandfathering scheme, people who have safely owned their firearms since they bought them would have been able to keep them and none of this would have cost the government anything?
• Have you guys considered how much anger and division this is going to cause? And by the way, these are licensed gun owners, they aren't criminals?
• So, what do you intend to do about all these gun owners, potentially hundreds of thousands of them who just don't turn in their guns? What happens to them when they get caught with one of these guns?
• What do you think this broken promise of compensation is going to do to the reputation of the government?
• Can you blame gun owners for being angry?