Ottawa’s firearms buyback plan isn’t about safety

It’s about politics and provinces are right to refuse to play along

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Federal Public Safety Minister Gary Anandasangaree’s leaked admission that Ottawa’s firearms buyback is unenforceable was no slip. It exposed the way federal power is deployed for partisan gain while provinces are left to pay the bill.

The leak matters because it exposes a pattern, not an exception. Ottawa drafts policies to suit its politics and expects provinces to carry the weight. Police budgets, university research chairs, hospital systems and housing markets are treated as levers to be pulled from Ottawa. The effects are felt locally, but the decisions are made elsewhere.

Consider the pattern. The Online Harms Act, rejected more than once, is introduced yet again, as if repetition can substitute for consent. Health care dollars are tied to federal strings that reorder provincial systems with no regard for local capacity. Immigration quotas climb at a pace provinces cannot house or school. Environmental rules descend without negotiation, upending years of co-operative planning. Each measure arrives as an edict. Consultation is reduced to announcement.

Resistance has already begun. Saskatchewan moved early, adopting legislation that makes any federal confiscation program subject to provincial authority, including RCMP operations. In Alberta, Premier Danielle Smith has gone further, declaring flatly: “We will not allow police in Alberta to confiscate previously legal firearms. I have directed two of my ministers to relentlessly defend Albertans’ right to lawful and safe possession of firearms and the right to self-defence.”

Even before the introduction of the Sovereignty Act, Tyler Shandro, then Alberta’s justice minister, announced that the province would not use its police or prosecutors to carry out confiscations. Although former premier Jason Kenney opposed a Sovereignty Act, his government likewise refused to act as Ottawa’s enforcer.

Alberta and Saskatchewan have since given themselves legislative tools, Sovereignty Acts, which assert the right of provinces to decline enforcement of federal laws they judge unconstitutional. These statutes formalize existing constitutional powers. Provinces without Sovereignty Acts have also drawn lines. Ontario has signalled its refusal to help enforce Ottawa’s firearms program.

These positions are lawful, rooted in the Constitution’s division of powers, which assigns the administration of justice and policing to the provinces.

This clarity ought to attract others. Manitoba, with one of the highest proportions of licensed hunters in the country, has strong reason to resist Ottawa’s targeting of lawful gun owners. Communities are not made safer by seizing deer rifles from responsible hunters, nor are public services improved by diverting scarce provincial resources into a program that federal ministers concede will not work. Manitoba would do well to follow Alberta and Saskatchewan in defending its jurisdiction, whether through a Sovereignty Act or by refusing to play Ottawa’s game.

The point is practical. Prairie provinces cannot spare rural detachments to seize hunters’ rifles because the Liberal caucus fears losing seats in Montreal. They cannot put their power grids at risk to meet Ottawa’s timelines while households absorb higher bills. Universities cannot be turned into federal policy pilot projects. Provinces exist to govern their own communities, not to absorb the fallout of federal experiments.

The genius of federalism lies in the division of authority, which encourages compromise and minimizes tyrannical imposition. Ottawa governs in its sphere, provinces in theirs. Where the two overlap, cooperation must be negotiated, not imposed. Sovereignty Acts sharpen that principle. They remind Ottawa that partnership is earned, not dictated.

What Anandasangaree’s admission exposed was not only the cynicism of one firearms program. It revealed a method of governing: federal power deployed for partisan gain, with provinces reduced to instruments. That cannot endure. Canada was never meant to be a chain of command. It was built as a contract—one that requires respect for provincial authority.

Provinces that refuse to carry out Ottawa’s politically motivated projects are not weakening Canada; they are enforcing its terms.

Marco Navarro-Genie is vice-president of research at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy and co-author, with Barry Cooper, of Canada’s COVID: The Story of a Pandemic Moral Panic (2023).