Surrey – The B.C. Wildlife Federation is pleased by the Public Safety Minister’s admission that the federal firearms buyback program is flawed policy, but we are perplexed that it will proceed, nonetheless.
The Minister said that if he had the firearm ban to do over again, he would focus on jailing people for using illegal firearms rather than targeting licensed firearms owners.
We couldn’t agree more.
“Buying hunting rifles back from licensed owners will have no impact on street crime or violence with firearms,” said BCWF Executive Director Jesse Zeman. “Academics know it, the police know it, and the Public Safety Minister knows it.”
The Minister of Public Safety agreed that most crimes are committed with illegal firearms and that licensed firearms owners are not the problem. The Minister also noted that municipalities don’t have the resources to execute the recovery of banned firearms.
“We have been telling the federal government for years that confiscating licensed firearms has no effect on criminals,” said Zeman. “It is an affront to all Canadians that the federal government is still going to plow forward with a bad policy they know won’t work at a cost of hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars.”
Wasting money on political optics is bad governance.
The BCWF would rather see that money spend on conservation and habitat restoration, protecting our watersheds from invasive species, combatting the spread of chronic wasting disease, dealing with criminals, or any number real threats to Canada’s natural heritage and public safety.
“The federal government knows that the gun buyback won’t work and now Canadians know it too,” said Zeman. “This is the perfect time to pivot away from a flawed policy and come up with a new plan.”
