Picture a winter morning in northern Alberta or rural Saskatchewan.
A licensed firearms owner – maybe an Indigenous hunter, maybe a rancher – reaches for the same rifle or shotgun they’ve used for decades.
It might be an SKS picked up when they were still cheap and plentiful. It might be a semi-automatic shotgun that takes detachable magazines because that’s what the local shop had in stock at the time.
No matter which firearm is used in this scenario, these facts doesn’t change.
- That firearm is a tool.
- That tool puts meat in the freezer.
- That tool stops predators from killing the farmer’s livestock.
- That tool is used for a fun day of target shooting or teaching firearm safety at the local shooting range.
Hundreds of kilometers away from where these guns are safely used in everyday life, “experts” and government bureaucrats debate whether the tool in your gun rack should be reclassified, banned, and confiscated from you.
On paper, this conversation is about “public safety,” “technical classifications,” and the federal government’s “Gap List.”
In the real world, it’s about whether ordinary, licensed Canadians should be criminalized for owning the same firearms they’ve used safely for decades.
Inside the Ottawa Bubble
Public Safety Canada gave its Expert Advisory Panel on Firearms a very specific mission.
The starting assumption wasn’t, “Are these firearms actually a problem?”
The starting assumption was, “These firearms look a lot like the ones we already banned, so how do we rationalize banning them as well?”
The Criminal Code states the federal government cannot prohibit firearms that, in its opinion, are “reasonable for use in Canada for hunting or sporting purposes.”
But the panel was instructed to “provide advice on firearms that remain on the market” that have a “semi-automatic action with sustained rapid-fire capability” while “identifying any that are reasonable for hunting and sport shooting purposes and to provide guidance on associated characteristics.”
From Ottawa’s vantage point, your firearm isn’t a hunting tool or a piece of family property. It’s a combination of features that Ottawa despises.
The Push to Ban More Guns
And there is always a “next round” of gun bans.
“[T]he panel … believes that the interests of gun owners need to be balanced against the public safety interests of all Canadians. This means that limits should be placed on the possession or use of firearms that pose substantial public safety risks because of their design and capabilities.”[i]
Their reasoning is not that licensed Canadians are misusing these guns, but that these firearms must be banned because they can accept larger magazines (already banned for decades), can be reloaded quickly, and are marketed in “tactical” terms.
This this is framed as simplifying a system that the panel believes is “one of the most complex systems of firearm classification in the world.”
Then there are the Mass Casualty Commission recommendations, which the panel fully supports. For example,
8.2: The federal government should create a new, simplified definition of “prohibited firearm” in the Criminal Code that would capture all semi-automatic firearms (centrefire or rimfire) that are designed with detachable magazines and modern military-style aesthetics/ergonomics.
For a licensed firearm owner, the government’s intent is crystal clear.
Your firearm is a design problem to be solved, not a legitimate tool you’ve used safely year after year for decades.
How Canadians Actually Use These Firearms
The report recognizes that “many Canadians, including many Indigenous people,” purchased semi-automatic military service rifles, especially the SKS, for hunting.
The SKS became a staple for Canadian hunters precisely because it was reliable in harsh conditions, affordable, and uses inexpensive ammunition.
For Indigenous and rural hunters, the SKS is not an exotic “military-style” curiosity, it’s a practical tool for hunting and predator control.
The panel is “reluctant to recommend the prohibition of all models” of semi-auto rifles on the “Gap List” for this reason.
The panel floats the idea that if these rifles are ultimately prohibited, the government should provide “suitable replacement firearms” to Indigenous hunters.
It does not make a similar recommendation for non-Indigenous hunters.
That phrase, “suitable replacement firearms,” sounds reassuring in a government report but raises hard questions:
- Who decides what counts as “suitable”? A panel in Ottawa, or the Canadians who actually use these firearms in everyday life?
- How will replacement firearms be sourced, funded, and delivered in remote communities already dealing with higher costs and fewer options?
- What happens in the years between prohibition and any possible replacement program – especially if bans bite first and mitigation comes later, if at all?
The rancher, farmer, and hunter (Indigenous or not) sees that their tools are being banned simply because of how they look.
Alberta’s Line in the Sand
“Next week our UCP government will be introducing a new motion under the Alberta Sovereignty Within a United Canada Act that will, if passed in the legislature, instruct all provincial entities, including our municipalities and law enforcement agencies, to refuse to enforce or prosecute under the federal gun seizure program,” said Alberta Premier Danielle Smith.[ii]
She also delivered a very deliberate message to would-be criminals.
“I’ve got a little tip for low-life criminals out there. If you don’t want to get shot, don’t break into someone’s house.”
That may be blunt political rhetoric, but it’s also a signal that Smith’s government believes moral responsibility lies with criminals, not licensed Canadian firearms owners.
Alberta vs Ottawa?
When you place the federal panel’s report on firearms beside Alberta’s political position, two opposing views are clear.
- In Ottawa’s “expert” frame, the solution is to ban more firearms, specifically semi-automatic actions, those with detachable magazines, tactical styling, and military lineage. Criminal intent is not part of their equation.
- In Alberta’s political frame, risk resides primarily in criminal intent (home invasions and misuse), and not in the mere possession of a particular firearm by a licensed gun owner. For Alberta, the solution is to refuse to cooperate with the federal government’s mass gun confiscation scheme, protect lawful self-defense, and free police to focus on violent offenders.
For Albertans, especially in rural and Indigenous communities, the gap between these two viewpoints is far from theoretical.
If Ottawa moves ahead with another round of firearm prohibitions and Alberta formally instructs its institutions not to enforce confiscations, ordinary licensed owners could find themselves in the middle of a constitutional tug of war.
The Coming Collision of Policy, Policing, and Civil Obedience
The more Ottawa leans into prohibition and reclassification, and the more Alberta leans into provincial resistance, practical questions arise.
For Police and Prosecutors
- What happens when the federal law says a firearm is prohibited, but a provincial directive says local police are not to prioritize or assist in its seizure?
- How do Crown prosecutors exercise discretion when the province’s political leadership has signaled that going after licensed gun owners is not an appropriate use of resources?
- Will enforcement become uneven across the country, with one set of expectations in Alberta and another in provinces that fully cooperate with Ottawa’s program?
These are not abstract legal puzzles. They go directly to questions of trust, legitimacy, and social cohesion.
When governments at different levels send conflicting signals about who is the real problem – violent criminals or licensed owners – people will place their loyalty where they feel most respected and most understood.
In Alberta and Saskatchewan, that’s not likely to be Ottawa.
[i] https://www.publicsafety.gc.ca/cnt/rsrcs/pblctns/fnl-rprt-frm-xprt-dvsry-pnl-frrms/index-en.aspx
2 Comments
Colin
Shameful what the government is doing to law abiding hunters
Tom
There is nothing useful for actual Canadians in the decades of government gun bans and confiscations. The one and only reason successive governments are targeting law-abiding, licensed sport shooters and hunters is to toy with the Hollywood-inspired imaginations of soft-minded Canadians to remain in office. Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. The actions of successive governments have been and continue to be immoral and illegal, and actual Canadians will not stand for that kind of treatment. Alvin said so himself – the current actions of Public Safety Canada are wrong (but they are going to follow through anyway?!? – this is where the government no longer serves The People and where The People need to reject the current government).