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FIRST READING: Gun 'buy back' has cost $24,000 per gun

For every three guns taken in, the government could have instead hired another police officer

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FIRST READING: Gun 'buy back' has cost $24,000 per gun Back to video

The Liberals’ plan to “buy back” thousands of once-legal firearms has experienced so many cost overruns that it has so far more than $24,000 for every gun collected.

This means that for just three firearms turned over as part of the program, the federal government could have instead paid the starting salary of a full-time RCMP officer ($71,191).

For every two guns, the government could have purchased a new fully-equipped patrol car.

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It’s been nearly six years since the government of then prime minister Justin Trudeau issued a surprise order-in-council declaring that more than 1,500 models of previously legal Canadian firearms were now classified as “prohibited.”

Overnight, tens of thousands of guns that had been legally acquired for hunting or sports shooting were now subject to Canada’s strictest firearms laws. They could not be sold, transferred or removed from storage, with any violators risking jail time and the complete seizure of their firearms.

As to what qualified a gun for prohibition, the terms were somewhat arbitrary, with the ban targeting firearms that look like they could be assault rifles — even if they have the exact same calibre, capacity and rate of fire as firearms that remain non-restricted.

The “Assault-Style Firearms Compensation Program,” which officially began on Jan. 19, is the long-delayed federal program to collect these prohibited arms in exchange for financial compensation.

As of the latest count from Public Safety Canada, “more than 32,000” firearms have been collected in the first six weeks of the program. But this is against the $779.8 million in costs that the program has incurred to date.

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This works out to roughly $24,370 per firearm, most of which is sunk administrative costs that the original owner will never see.

The government has not announced which firearms they have collected thus far, but the maximum listed compensation amount is $9,945 for a rare precision rifle, with most falling between $500 and $3,500.

The $779.8 million figure comes via Daniel Fritter, a writer with Calibre Magazine who meticulously tracked more than half a dozen instances in which the program was quietly injected with new infusions of government money, allowing it to surge well past its original budget.

Most recent official declarations stated that the program cost would be capped at $742 million. Of this amount, $250 million was to be spent on compensation amounts, with the money expected to cover up to 136,000 guns.

Long before a single firearm had even been collected, the Assault-Style Firearms Compensation Program (ASFCP) had wracked up $51.6 million in staffing and clerical costs between 2021 and 2023. That number comes via an Order Paper request filed in 2024 by Conservative MP Larry Brock.

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Only in 2024 did the ASFCP first receive an entry in the federal budget, with $30.4 million being set aside towards “taking assault weapons off our streets.”

But by year’s end that figure would more than triple to $105.9 million, thanks to two “supplementary” injections of cash recorded by the Treasury Board: An extra $33.8 million recorded in the agency’s first round of “supplementary estimates,” and another $41.7 million in the second round.

The next year, the budget would triple again. Public Safety Canada’s most recent financial report included three multi-million dollar increases to the baseline costs of ASFCP. One for $61.9 million, another for $319.2 million and a third for $6.8 million.

And given that these are all increases on the previous year’s ASFCP budget of $105.9 million, the total cost just for 2025 comes in at $493.8 million.

And then there’s the administration costs for the RCMP.

Larry Brock’s 2024 Order Paper found that the Mounties had spent $10.2 million on the ASFCP by the end of 2023, and another $8.5 million in 2024.

The RCMP’s quarterly reports then recorded an “increase of $15.7 million to advance the collection of banned assault-style firearms” — bringing the 2024 total to $24.2 million.

The next year, the RCMP recorded another “increase of $61.4 million for the Assault-Style Firearms Compensation Program.” Which, on top of the $24.2 million, brought the yearly total to $85.6 million.

Add all of Fritter’s figures together, and the known cost of the ASFCP is $779.8 million as of the beginning of 2026.

In terms of what that kind of money could buy in any other law enforcement context, it’s equivalent to half the annual budget of the Toronto Police, which currently ranks as the fourth largest police service in North America. And it’s significantly larger than the $497 million spent each year to run the Vancouver Police. In Montreal, it could cover the entire police budget for about 11 months.

The ASFCP has proved wildly unpopular with Canadian police forces, with more than a dozen major Canadian police agencies publicly refusing to participate in the buyback or enforce its terms.

Police cited the program as a drain on law enforcement resources, with some pointing out that most of their gun crime was due to smuggled firearms already existing beyond the boundaries of legal firearm ownership.

“With limited resources and increased public safety demands, DRPS must focus on initiatives that have the greatest impact on community safety — reducing violent crime, targeting repeat offenders, and removing illegal firearms from our streets,” reads a Jan. 26 statement from Ontario’s Durham Regional Police Service Chief Peter Moreira that matches many of the main points made by others.

The most recent police service to come out against the program was Ottawa Police, who just this week said they couldn’t justify the time needed to process and collect firearms covered by the program.

“We support efforts to reduce firearm-related harm, and we recognize the objectives of the federal program. At the same time, decisions like this have to be grounded in what can be delivered safely and consistently,” Chief Eric Stubbs said in a statement.

First Reading is a Canadian politics newsletter curated by the National Post’s own Tristin Hopper. To get an early version sent directly to your inbox, sign up here.

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