The Manitoba government has joined Alberta and Saskatchewan in pushing back against the federal government’s planned gun confiscation program as part of its mandatory buyback program for now-banned firearms.
“We feel many aspects of the federal approach to gun crimes unnecessarily target lawful gun owners while having little impact on criminals, who are unlikely to follow gun regulations in any event,” Goertzen wrote in the letter.
Third Province to Oppose
Manitoba’s action against the federal buyback program comes just days after Alberta and Saskatchewan each informed Ottawa that they would not authorize the use of provincial policing funds in assisting with Ottawa’s planned gun confiscation.Ottawa has stated that the buyback program “will be mandatory” and will require any Canadian owning guns banned by the new legislation to sell them to the government at prices determined by the feds, or else have them “lawfully disposed.”
Alberta was the first province to announce its opposition to the buyback, with Justice Minister Tyler Shandro saying in a press conference on Sept. 26 that the provincial government “will not tolerate taking officers off the streets in order to confiscate the property of law-abiding firearms owners.”
“Neither the province or Alberta’s RCMP want police resources taken off the street in order to confiscate firearms,” Shandro wrote in a statement posted on Twitter.