The federal government spent $2.5 million to mail out a document containing information on a new firearms prohibition to all gun owners..From May 2020 to June 2020, the RCMP sent out a document titled 'ANNOUNCEMENT OF A FIREARMS PROHIBITION' to all Possessions and Acquisitions License (PAL) holders in Canada..The document referred to an order by the federal government that banned nine types of firearms, guns with a bore of 20 mm or greater, and the upper receivers of M16, AR-10, AR-15 and M4 pattern firearms..On June 4, 2020, Western Standard Publisher Derek Fildebrandt asked for all documents containing the cost of the mass mail item through a Freedom of Information and Privacy request..According to the documents, the mail went out to a total of 2,211,974 addresses, with each page costing $0.039 to print and $0.037 to fold into a prepaid envelope..The total gross cost of the entire campaign, including printing, mailing and labour costs, was $2,517,733. That included $440,828 from Gilmore Global, $352,199 from Canada Post in May, and $1,724,706 from Canada Post in June..According to an invoice included in the documents, the envelopes cost $45,225, the processing cost $8,847, the letter insertion cost $81,843, the lettershop inkjet cost $48,663, the colour imaging duplex cost $172,553, the processing overtime requested cost $25,200, and additional copies of the letters cost $7,800..The information was received on June 7, nearly two years after it was requested..Fildebrandt said the wait time for the documents was "insanity" and highlights "just how absurdly broken the access to information system is and potentially how hesitant the federal government was when it came to releasing this information."."We were not asking them for bunch of classified data on overseas spies. We're asking them for a piece of data that they should have had before they even sent out the mail," he said.
