By Isaac Lamoureux, True North Wire
The Liberals’ firearm buyback program has seen its cost rise by the tens of millions but has still failed to collect a single gun.
Leader of the Opposition in the Senate, Don Plett, shared a post to X on Thursday where another senator questioned Minister of Public Safety Dominic LeBlanc about the program.
Plett revealed that the buyback program has cost Canadian taxpayers at least $67 million so far. Of that price tag, $11.5 million of taxpayer dollars have been spent on consultants the Liberals refuse to identify.
When Plett asked the government representative in the Senate Marc Gold whether he would table the contracts, Gold refused.
“This is an incredible amount of money to spend on a program that doesn’t yet exist, which ultimately targets licensed, trained, law-abiding gun owners – not criminals,” said Plett.
CEO and executive director of the Canadian Coalition for Firearms Rights, Rod Giltaca, told True North that the problem with the Liberals’ use of consultants is nothing new.
“I think Canadians have become desensitized to the numbers they see, but this cost alone could have made a difference in public safety if it were used responsibly,” he said.
LeBlanc saw things differently.
“I don’t share your view that we’re targeting law-abiding gun owners,” he said. “Canadians support these measures. We’re proud of the program that we’re going to launch. It was a commitment we made to Canadians in an election, and we’ve done a lot of good work in getting this ready, and I look forward to launching the details of the buyback program in the coming weeks.”
True North has been covering the Liberals’ buyback program since 2021, following the federal government’s order-in-council banning 1,500 types of firearms in May 2020. While the cost has risen by the millions and tens of millions per year, no guns have been collected. The Liberal government’s failed long gun registry from the 1990s was supposed to cost $2 million and ended up costing $2 billion.