WATCH: Liberals issue Order-in-Council to ban more guns

The government also extended the amnesty period for firearm owners until March 1, 2026.

Alex Dhaliwal
  |   March 07, 2025   |   News   |   3 Comments

 

CPAC

The Trudeau government secretly banned more firearms Friday in its final days before a new leader is chosen. The 179 newly-banned makes and models is the second such Order-in-Council in recent months, after 324 more were prohibited last December 5.

“It is our hope, our government's intention, that this be the last discrete listing of assault style firearms for prohibition,” said Associate Public Safety Minister Rachel Bendayan.

Owners can no longer use, sell or lend the newly-prohibited models, nor can they be bought or imported. “This prohibition takes effect immediately,” she said.

A senior government official clarified they were semi-automatic models with “sustained rapid-fire capability” and “large magazine capacity,” according to the National Post.

Current firearm laws already limit magazine capacity to five for nearly all semi-automatic rifles, whereas pistol magazine capacity is limited to 10.

The government also said it was extending the amnesty period for owners until March 1, 2026, given that phase two remains in the planning phase.

Former public safety minister Dominic LeBlanc confirmed that federal officials would defer regulation and confiscation of ‘prohibited’ firearms until December 1, 2025. A spokesperson for the minister said they have “no intention… modifying the list at this point.”

“I myself have been frustrated that we couldn’t move faster on a program,” Bendayan told reporters. “The reality is we want to do it right.”

Since early December, when the previous minister banned hundreds of additional firearm makes and models, distributors and retailers have been the focus of the first phase of the "buyback" program.

Approximately 2,500 firearm makes and models have been added to the prohibited weapons list by the Trudeau government since the initial Order-in-Council was introduced in 2020.

“Let's be clear, these are weapons of war, firearms designed specifically to kill as many people as possible in the least amount of time possible,” Bendayan said.

“If we finish the job well, we have all the tools necessary to ensure that new models of assault-style weapons will be captured and denied legal entry into the Canadian market,” she added.

In early 2021, the families of the Polytechnique victims uninvited Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to future commemoration activities after proposing a voluntary “buyback” program.  

The feds tabled a mandatory confiscation scheme later that year. It passed the Senate on December 14, 2023 without amendments by a vote of 60 to 24, and received royal assent the following day. 

Last December 5, LeBlanc said: “Our goal is to ensure that no community, no family is devastated by mass shootings in Canada. This prohibition takes effect immediately.”

“This means these firearms can no longer be legally used, sold or imported in Canada and can only be transferred or transported under extremely limited circumstances.”

Gun rights groups criticized the Liberals for targeting law-abiding gun owners, while gun control groups such as PolyRemembers praised the recent changes.

“Today marks the first crucial step in the realization of the Liberal government’s promise to ban assault weapons, guns that are especially lethal and commonly used to commit mass murders,” said PolyRemembers spokesperson Nathalie Provost.

Rod Giltaca, CEO for the Canadian Coalition for Firearm Rights (CCFR), claimed such rhetoric serves only to demonize licensed, law-abiding gun owners.

“It is yet another betrayal and a black mark on Canada’s history, its relationship with the government, and its relationship with the RCMP,” he said in a statement to the National Post. “The conduct of all the above towards law-abiding, hard-working citizens is nauseating and immoral.”

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Alex Dhaliwal

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Alex Dhaliwal is a Political Science graduate from the University of Calgary. He has actively written on relevant Canadian issues with several prominent interviews under his belt.

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  • John Cheyne
    commented 2025-03-09 00:47:08 -0500
    Pierre Poilievre will undo all of this nonsense.
  • R.
    followed this page 2025-03-08 13:32:07 -0500
  • Robert Pariseau
    commented 2025-03-07 19:25:04 -0500
    Can we get someone to press Bendayan’s hair ramrod-straight? Because I’m pretty sure she’d \loathe\ it.
  • Bruce Atchison
    commented 2025-03-07 19:14:58 -0500
    I hope this political trick loses traction. It’s a ploy Liberals use when their poll numbers sag. But banning guns won’t stop crime. Banish criminals to hard time will make the streets safer. Taking hunting rifles won’t.