Canada Takes Belated Aim at Gun It Neglected to Ban Before Now

Over the past few years, the Liberals in charge of the Canadian government have banned the sale and possession of more than 2,000 makes and models of firearms, including the vast majority of semi-automatic long guns on the market. 

Oddly, though, the Liberals have taken no moves to ban SKS rifles… at least until now. 

Public Safety Minister Gary Anandasangaree says the federal government is launching a review of Canada’s firearms classification regime that will include consultations with Indigenous communities on the SKS rifle.

The government has been heavily criticized by gun control advocates for not including the semi-automatic SKS in its list of banned firearms. The SKS is commonly used in Indigenous communities to hunt for food and has also been used in police killings and other high-profile shootings in recent years.

PolySeSouvient, a gun control organization formed after the 1989 mass shooting at Montreal’s École Polytechnique, has asked Ottawa to prohibit the weapon but include an exemption for Indigenous hunters who use the rifle primarily for sustenance.

Such a blatantly discriminatory move wouldn’t fly here in the United States. It would be clear violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to allow only certain racial groups to own a particular firearm, just as it would be to forbid a members of a particular racial group from possessing certain arms. 

Canada, though, has no constitutional protections for the right to keep and bear arms, at least at the federal level. Officials in Alberta have declared the provincial constitution does protect the right to keep arms (though not necessarily to bear them), and are vowing to resist the federal government’s gun ban efforts.

The move to re-evaluate the status of the SKS comes as the Liberals are planning to take their compensated confiscation scheme nationwide after a pilot program in Nova Scotia earlier this year, where compliance was reportedly around 10%. And as National Post columnist Lorne Gunter recently detailed, Alberta isn’t the only place in Canada where officials are declining to participate in the government’s “buyback” scheme.

After the UCP government introduced a motion Tuesday that would advise all police forces in the province (including the RCMP) not to make arrests under the federal act and direct Crown prosecutors not to bring charges, there will be lots of handwringing about how the Alberta government is acting alone against the Constitution and the law. 

Except Saskatchewan won’t enforce the buyback, either. Nor will the Ontario Provincial Police (OPP), several major city police services and many of the associations representing frontline police officers from coast to coast.

Even the National Police Association, the union representing RCMP officers, has said the buyback will “divert extremely important personnel, resources, and funding away from addressing the more immediate and growing threat of criminal use of illegal firearms.”

Gunter says that’s the fundamental flaw in the Liberals’ gun ban plans: it’s aimed at Canadian gun owners who aren’t violent criminals, while ignoring gangs and gun traffickers. 

If the Liberals decide to ban the SKS but carve out an exception for Indigenous hunters, other Canadian gun owners should demand the same carveout for their lawful activities with otherwise-banned firearms. If an Indigenous hunter can be trusted not to commit a crime with an SKS, why can’t a farmer in Saskatchewan or Manitoba be trusted with an AR-15? 

Of course, if the Liberals did that it would make their gun ban a pointless exercise. Okay, even more of a pointless exercise. More importantly, it would infuriate Canada’s gun control lobby, and the Liberals generally like to stay on their good side. PolySeSouvient may be willing to let a few Indigenous hunters in Nunavut and the Northwest Territories keep ahold of their SKS rifles, but they’re not about to agree to any policy that would allow the vast majority of Canadian gun owners to keep their semi-automatic firearms, no matter how law-abiding they might be. 

Editor’s Note: Let’s fight as hard as we can to keep Canadian-style gun confiscation efforts confined north of the border. 

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