The appeal was submitted on grounds that the Federal Court committed an error by rejecting claims that federal gun legislation breached various charter rights.
Canadian gun rights advocates
have submitted an appeal to the Federal Court’s decision in which it dismissed multiple lawsuits against the Liberal government’s May 2020 ban on more than 1,500 firearms.
The appeal was filed on Nov. 29 by the Canadian Coalition for Firearms Rights (CCFR) along with several firearms dealers and gun owners after Justice Catherine Kane
ruled on Oct. 30 that the government had not exceeded its authority granted by Parliament by bringing forth the ban.
“We promised Canadian gun owners that we’d fight this until the end, and we meant it,” Tracey Wilson, CCFR vice-president of public relations told The Epoch Times. “It should be appalling to all Canadians that the Liberal government can reach into the lives of citizens who’ve done nothing to warrant it, who’ve owned these firearms safely and without issue for decades, generations even.”
The federal government, on May 1, 2020,
announced a prohibition on more than 1,500 models and variants of so-called “assault-style” firearms, meaning they can no longer be legally used, imported, or sold in Canada. The prohibition was put in place shortly after an April 2020 mass shooting in Portapique, Nova Scotia, which claimed 22 lives.
The shooter did not have a firearms licence and had obtained his guns illegally, including three smuggled from the U.S.
The firearms prohibition was accompanied by an amnesty period for gun owners while Ottawa worked out a buyback program to provide compensation. While the amnesty was set to expire on Oct. 30 of this year, the federal government announced a two-year extension in October.
Details of the buyback program have yet to be finalized.
The Fraser Institute has estimated the plan could cost between $2.6 billion and $6.7 billion, far more than
the Parliamentary Budget Officer’s estimate of $47 million to $756 million.
Appeal
The appeal is being submitted on the grounds that the Federal Court committed an error by rejecting claims that the regulations breached various charter rights. The Federal Court previously ruled that the firearms ban did not infringe on Section 7 of the charter, which
refers to the right to “life, liberty and security of the person and the right not to be deprived thereof except in accordance with the principles of fundamental justice.”
The judge had ruled that even if the court had found the firearms regulations failed to follow the principles of fundamental justice, it would have deemed the infringement a “reasonable limit” as per Section 1 of the charter.
“The overriding goal of public safety outweighs any possible infringement on the rights of firearm owners who are now more limited in their choice of firearm for hunting and sporting purposes,”
wrote Justice Kane, who added there had been no infringement of the Canadian Bill of Rights.
The appeal argues that the court erred by finding that the new gun regulations were “not overly broad and vague” and by finding that the regulations were compliant with the Bill of Rights.
According to Michael Loberg, general counsel of the CCFR and managing partner of Loberg Ector LLP, the appeal is focused around the ultra vires argument, which is that the firearms listed in the regulations are reasonable for use in Canada for hunting or sporting purposes, and historically have been, and therefore should not be banned by a secret Orders In Council process.
“We are also bringing into view the core problem of the deprivation of private property without due process of law and without procedural fairness, which are legally not the lead arguments but is literally at the heart of the unfairness being visited upon law-abiding gun owners, who have done absolutely nothing to deserve any of this,” he told The Epoch Times.
Bill C-21
In addition to the prohibition of more than 1,500 firearms, the Liberal’s Bill C-21 is currently being studied in the Senate after it was adopted in the House of Commons in 2022.The bill aims to create an evergreen definition to ban firearms that discharge centre-fire ammunition in a semi-automatic manner, and which are designed to hold a magazine of six or more cartridges. The definition would only apply to firearms manufactured after the bill comes into force, and not impact current owners of these firearm types.
The government backed down from a previous version of the bill
in February that would have added hundreds of extra firearm types—many of which are used for hunting—to the prohibited list. The amendment to Bill C-21 would have banned any rifle or shotgun that could potentially accept a magazine with more than five rounds, guns that could generate more than 10,000 joules of energy or had muzzles wider than 20 millimetres, and semi-automatic firearms without detachable magazines that do not meet the definition of “assault-style firearms.”
Conservative and NDP MPs united in opposition to the bill, and the Assembly of First Nations passed a resolution condemning the legislation for potentially infringing on First Nations and treaty rights to hunt and harvest.
After walking back that version of Bill C-21, cabinet introduced a new version that instead seeks to create a firearms committee to decide which weapons should be banned. The bill would also cement into law the current freeze on the transfer of handguns, which was also
put into place back in August 2022.
Bill C-21 also aims to implement
red flag provisions, allowing for applications to be made in provincial courts to prevent someone from possessing firearms and other weapons, “if the person believes on reasonable grounds that it is not desirable in the interests of the safety of the person against whom the order is sought.”
