SASKATOON, SK: The Canadian Taxpayers Federation is calling on Liberal Leader Mark Carney to stop the gun ban and buyback after he announced he would continue with the scheme.

“Carney needs to scrap this plan and stop wasting taxpayer’s money on it,” said Gage Haubrich, CTF Prairie Director. “Planning to spend potentially billions of dollars on a program that is not going to make Canadians safer is a waste of money.

“Carney needs to be cancelling this wasteful plan, not doubling down on it.”

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre is promising to get rid of Ottawa’s gun bans.

The government said the buyback would cost taxpayers $200 million in 2019. Only buying back the guns could cost up to $756 million, according to the Parliamentary Budget Officer. Government documents show that the buyback is now likely to cost almost $2 billion.

The banned gun list includes more than 2,000 different types of firearms.

Every year since the gun ban was announced in 2020, violent gun crime in Canada has increased.

New Zealand conducted a similar, but more extensive, gun ban and buyback in 2019. New Zealand had 1,216 violent firearm offenses in 2023. That’s 349 more offences than the year before the buyback.

Experts also agree that the buyback won’t make Canadians any safer.

The National Police Federation, the union representing the RCMP, says Ottawa’s buyback “diverts extremely important personnel, resources, and funding away from addressing the more immediate and growing threat of criminal use of illegal firearms.”

“Buyback programs are largely ineffective at reducing gun violence, in large part because the people who participate in such programs are not likely to use those guns to commit violence,” said University of Toronto professor Jooyoung Lee

“Experts say that this gun ban and buyback won’t do anything to make Canadians safer,” Haubrich said. “Carney needs to listen to the experts and commit to cancelling this scheme before it costs taxpayers any more money.”