Gage Haubrich is the Prairie Director and Devin Drover is the General Counsel for the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.No self-respecting shopper pays for anything without looking at the checkout total first. But Prime Minister Mark Carney and Public Safety Minister Gary Anandasangaree are moving full steam ahead with their gun ban and confiscation project without being transparent with taxpayers about the full cost.In July 2023, the Canadian Taxpayers Federation (CTF) filed an access-to-information request with the RCMP for all projected costs to confiscate firearms.In January 2024, seven months later, the government responded and provided a document from the Pacific Region RCMP showing it would cost $12.6 million to confiscate and destroy banned firearms in that region.The government refused to provide the cost estimates from RCMP divisions in other parts of the country.The CTF then filed a complaint with the information commissioner, whose job it is to make sure the federal government is following the law and being transparent. The government originally refused to release the additional documents because of access-to-information exemptions for security and advice. Two years later, while the information commissioner was investigating the complaint, the government dropped these technicalities and blocked the release by claiming the documents are protected by cabinet confidence. That label is supposed to protect secret cabinet discussions and prevent any further review by the information commissioner..But that’s ridiculous. The government already gave the CTF the numbers for British Columbia. It’s obviously not top secret information used for cabinet discussion. It’s just information that the government likely doesn’t want taxpayers to see.Since the information commissioner could not review this any further, the CTF had no choice but to take the government to court to compel it to release the documents. And after months of filings and procedural roadblocks, the CTF has finally been able to request a court date to settle this case.More than three years later, taxpayers might get access to these documents and get the full facts about the costs of this program.And that’s the key problem here. The government is confiscating guns from Canadians as you read this, and taxpayers don’t have a full picture of the cost.The government also keeps changing the price tag for this program. In 2019, the Liberal Party originally said the confiscation would cost $200 million. Then the Parliamentary Budget Officer said it would cost up to $756 million to compensate owners for their firearms without considering administration costs. The government’s current projection is about $742 million. Other experts have put the final price tag at about $6 billion.If any employee changed their estimates for a project that many times, they’d be looking for a new job.But it gets worse for taxpayers. That’s because it’s one thing to be forced to pay for a program that goes over budget but accomplishes something. It’s another thing entirely to be forced to pay an unclear amount of money for a program for which there is no evidence that it will work.The CTF filed a separate access-to-information request with Public Safety Canada, the department in charge of the confiscation. The request asked for “all analysis from the department on the efficacy of the assault style firearms compensation program and its effect on crime rates/public safety.”The department said, “No information related to your request exists within Public Safety Canada.”That means the government has no idea if this expensive program will even work, yet it refuses to tell taxpayers the full details of the cost.Taxpayers deserve to know the full cost of this program, especially when the government can’t produce any analysis showing that it will work.Taxpayers shouldn’t be forced to pay for this confiscation scheme that is unlikely to work in the first place. And they shouldn’t be forced to go to court to get basic cost information. Carney and Anandasangaree need to be transparent and tell taxpayers the full cost of their failing gun ban and confiscation program.Gage Haubrich is the Prairie Director and Devin Drover is the General Counsel for the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.
