Quote of the Day
According to Daniel Fritter of the Canadian firearm magazine Calibre, as of early 2026 the amount spent on the gun grab program is CAD$779.8 million, an amount that exceeds the original estimated cost by more than 300 percent.
Fritter refers to government sources showing that “the current known, documented cost to the taxpayer” per gun surrendered or confiscated is approximately CAD$25,000, with the “undocumented cost being even higher” because the “costs accrued by more than a dozen partner agencies” involved haven’t been included.
To place that per-gun price tag into context, Public Safety Canada has advised that it intends to pay out an average of CAD$1,800 per gun, making the gun grab’s administrative cost per firearm significantly over CAD$20,000…and likely more.
However, the few people who participated in the federal government’s initial rollout of the program for individual gun owners in November were reportedly paid far less, around CAD$700 per gun, increasing the already astonishing imbalance between the cost of administration and compensation. Nothing has been publicly released about the make, model and compensation paid for each confiscated gun collected then and whether these were truly the “weapons of war” that the Liberals used to justify the gun grab. The government “released records that were almost entirely blacked out” in response to a freedom of information request.
Canada’s gun owners have overwhelmingly rejected the gun grab: “somewhere between just 1.6 and 6 percent of newly prohibited firearms in circulation have been declared,” states Fritter. An increasing number of jurisdictions have taken the “ten-foot barge pole” approach to participation, too.
NRA ILA
March 16, 2026
Canada’s Spending More Than $20,000 in Administrative Costs Per Confiscated Gun in Its Bloated ‘Compensation’ Scheme – Shooting News Weekly
With such an incredibly high “administrative cost” per gun confiscated you have to wonder if the primary purpose is to fill the pockets of the criminal politicians.
In any case, with less than 6% of the guns being turned over you have to give Canadian gun owners some credit for the risks they are taking. I wish them luck.