Four provinces joined together to call on the federal government to halt plans to “use scarce RCMP and municipal police resources to confiscate over 100,000 legally acquired firearms from Canadians.”.Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and New Brunswick issued a statement at the 2022 Meeting of Federal, Provincial, and Territorial Ministers Responsible for Justice and Public Safety to discuss the federal plan to “confiscate legally acquired firearms.”. GunsGuns .The Prairie provinces already wrote to their provincial RCMP divisions to let the RCMP know no provincial police funding should be used to confiscate legal firearms..READ MORE Saskatchewan will not fund federal gun buyback program, joining Alberta.“The funding should be used to fight the criminal misuse of firearms by tackling border integrity, smuggling, and trafficking,” said the statement..Alberta Minister of Justice and Solicitor General Tyler Shandro said just two years ago the federal government did not want to spend police resources on grabbing legal firearms..“Two years ago, the federal government said that using police resources would be ‘expensive and inefficient,’” said Shandro..“Now the federal government has resorted to using police resources to seize firearms from Canadians. Make no mistake, the federal firearms confiscation program will cost us billions and will not improve public safety. Alberta’s government is not legally obligated to provide resources and will not do so.”. long guns .Saskatchewan Corrections, Policing, and Public Safety Minister Christine Tell and Justice and Attorney General for Saskatchewan Bronwyn Eyre jointly said Saskatchewan supports going after illegal guns, but the province does not support grabbing guns from “law abiding” owners..“While we fully support crime initiatives that focus on the issues related to the criminal use of illegal firearms, preventing and combating gang violence and addressing the issue of illegal or smuggled guns in our province, we don’t support those that impact law abiding, hunters, sport shooters, ranchers, farmers, and indigenous people who use firearms for lawful and good reasons,” said Eyre..Minister of Justice and Attorney General for Manitoba Kelvin Goertzen said the federal government’s plan has “little impact on criminals” and targets legal gun owners..“Manitoba has consistently stated that many aspects of the federal approach to gun crimes unnecessarily target lawful gun owners while having little impact on criminals, who are unlikely to follow gun regulations in any event,” said Goertzen. .“In Manitoba’s view, any buy-back program cannot further erode our scarce provincial police resources, already suffering from large vacancy rates, and away from focusing on investigation of violent crimes.”.READ MORE Manitoba joins Alberta and Sask in revolting against Trudeau’s gun grab.Minister of Public Safety for New Brunswick Kris Austin wants the RCMP to use the government’s “limited resources” on policing, not the buyback program..“New Brunswick’s bottom line is this: RCMP resources are spread thin as it is,” said Austin..“We have made it clear to the Government of Canada that we cannot condone any use of those limited resources at all in their planned buyback program.”
