Back in May of 2020 the federal government outlawed more than 1,500 makes and models of guns, as part of its gun control crackdown. Now, a recent Parliamentary Budget Officer report outlines the cost of this initiative that will buy-back the now-banned guns from legal owners.
While Public Safety Minister Bill Blair previously said compensation costs would be between $300 million and $400 million, and the PBO report pegs the range at between $47 million and $756 million, the actual cost could be much higher.
This new Fraser Institute post highlights the expensive details.
“The PBO assessment only includes compensation but excludes much larger costs such as planning and program administration, consultation fees, firearm collection and assessment, storage and destruction of collected firearms, and business losses due to prohibited inventory. These additional costs dwarf the compensation costs.”
Adding the collection and other costs to the compensation costs brings that number up to between $2.6 billion and $6.7 billion, author Gary Mauser estimates.
