Charlottetown council votes against being part of federal gun buyback program

Charlottetown won’t be using police resources to take part in the federal government’s assault-style firearm buyback program. City council went against a city staff recommendation to take part in it.

“I think what we heard is that staff felt that they could open up some resource time to do it. It's a federal program. We have RCMP in our city who are under federal jurisdictions. For me, that was like a duplication of service,” says Coun. Julie McCabe, who chairs the police and protective services committee.

Council voted 10-0 to not take part in the program during a regular meeting Tuesday night.

McCabe said she believes there are other priorities Charlottetown police could focus on if there is capacity.

“I'd love to see the school resource officers back in the high schools. I think that we could be doing a lot of preventative work with youth,” she said.

“That was something that we did have in place before. And because of restraints due to numbers and operations, that was one area that had to be cut.”

Concerns raised over gun buyback program

About 75 people showed up to speak out against the program and any participation in it by the city. Cheers and clapping erupted in the council chamber and from an overflow room when the vote was taken.

“The Liberal government over the last five-and-a-half years has been progressively banning more and more firearms from law-abiding licensed firearms owners and in a misguided attempt to reduce crime, but it's had no impact,” said Tracey Wilson, vice-president of public relations for the Canadian Coalition for Firearm Rights.

“And now they're looking for municipal councils to partner with them and confiscating firearms from their citizens… I want the focus to be on crime, violence and gun smuggling, not on hunters and sports shooters.”

The program seeks to buy back assault-style firearms like the AR-15. In 2020, the Liberal government banned about 2,500 of those kinds of firearms shortly after the mass shooting in Portapique, N.S., where the gunman Gabriel Wortman killed 22 people.

Since then, the deadline to sell guns back has been pushed to October 2026.

“The Liberal government used the tragedy out of Nova Scotia to perpetuate this on law-abiding citizens. Keeping in mind Gabriel Wortman didn’t have a firearms licence. His guns were all illegally sourced,” Wilson said.

The federal RCMP have said two firearms Wortman used have been banned.

‘It will definitely affect us’

Ottawa calls the buyback program voluntary, but those who refuse to deactivate or sell their firearms by the deadline will be in violation of the law. That includes business owners.

“It's costing the government billions, and for another, we are not a problem. It's a sport. People are hunters and shooters, sport shooters,” said Angie MacDonald, who runs Big Boot Shooting Range in South Granville.

“We're not harming anyone. And yet the government is making us criminals, making us look like we're the ones that are causing crime.”

“Certainly if they can't transport their firearms, they're not going to shoot. So we won't have memberships. So yeah, it will definitely affect us,” MacDonald said, adding gun owners aren’t backing down from continuing to push back against the ban.

Marylou Wills runs Atlantic Guns and Gear in Crapaud alongside her husband.

“We have shipments of [firearms] that are sitting in our backroom that we can't sell because they're currently on the ban list. So that's inventory that we take as a loss,” she said, adding it makes planning difficult because of worries that guns popular at ranges could be added to the ban list.

“What is the government doing to get the illegal firearms off the streets? That’s where the issue is.”

Gun owners at council Tuesday night said they were pleased with the city’s decision, but they want the federal government to stop trying to implement the program altogether.

“I think it's a tremendous waste of resources and money to try and take firearms away from firearm owners that have legally obtained their firearms and have been vetted by the RCMP,” said gun owner Jason Chiasson.

“They need to go after criminals and the handguns being smuggled into Canada. That's just the black and white of it.”

Going to the shooting range has helped him make new friends and build community, he said.