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OTTAWA — Ottawa’s plan to send prohibited firearms to Ukraine to fight the Russian incursion has some experts scratching their heads, while staunch Ukraine supporters worry it could unintentionally pit aggrieved gun owners against the war effort.
The Liberal government announced last week it will work with Canadian businesses to donate select weapons banned in Canada to Ukraine, though details about the new plan remain sparse even days later.
Richard Shimooka, a senior fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute and defence-procurement expert, said this isn’t the sort of equipment Ukraine really needs to win the war and that it already suffers from a lack of standardized weapons.
“In some ways it’s symbolic and yet in other ways it’s not helping at all,” he said. “It’s not going to move the needle.”
He points out the real problem is that shell-hungry Ukraine desperately needs 155 mm artillery ammunition, but Canada’s munitions supply chain doesn’t have the capacity to feed the country what it needs most. And when it comes to small arms, hundreds of one type of standardized assault rifle would be most useful.
“They’re all semi-automatic,” he noted about the buyback guns. “If you want a true, military-style weapon being used in Ukraine, you want a fully automatic weapon.”
On Sunday, U.S. president-elect Donald Trump called for an immediate ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine, raising questions about how long the war could last. The United States has been by far Ukraine’s largest military backer throughout the war.
Kelly Sundberg, a criminologist at Mount Royal University, said the move seems more like political theatre to bolster Ottawa’s controversial program than a carefully considered policy, since it appears it could wind up being a small assortment of weapons and ammunition in the end.
“It sounds like a political stunt and not very well thought out at that,“ he said. “It seems very hastily thought up and somewhat desperate, frankly.”
The Canadian government would also need to test and possibly repair the guns for safety before sending them over, he added.
Yaroslav Baran, a consultant with the Pendulum Group, former president of the Ukrainian Canadian Congress and well-known conservative commentator in Ottawa, meanwhile, said he worries the plan could inadvertently wedge gun owners against Ukraine.
“While I always appreciate any support for Ukraine from the government of Canada, the idea of linking these two completely unrelated issues is misguided and dangerous,” he said.
“If you’re at the receiving end of that message — the hunter or farmer being told to hand over your firearm — you’re going to get your back up. Then, the follow-up message is, ‘By the way, we’re going to ship it overseas to help Ukraine,’ (so) your reaction is going to be ‘Like hell you are.'”
Denys Volkov, a community advocate in Winnipeg who was born in Ukraine and has long pushed for help for the country during its war with Russia, said he shares that sentiment and that the announcement caught many in the diaspora off guard.
He said to talk about sending Ukraine “random guns taken from law-abiding gun owners” is “not a serious conversation of how to help” the country.
“The type of help Ukraine needs is on a massive scale.”
Ottawa has insisted the move could help, even if only a little.
Defence Minister Bill Blair said last week that Canada reached out to Ukraine in October asking if any of the firearms listed under the program could be useful, and Ukraine said yes.
“Every bit of assistance that we can offer to the Ukrainians is one step towards their victory, and a worthwhile investment of our collective time and efforts,” Blair said.
A government official not authorized to speak on the record said it would be businesses, not individuals providing the guns in this case, and that Ukraine has identified some 20 different firearms that could prove useful, so it would not be a random mashup of weaponry.
The source noted this comes in addition to Canada’s contributions of 21,000 small arms to Ukraine, including assault rifles and machine guns.
Blair said last week he does not yet know how many weapons Ottawa can supply to Ukraine through this program, and will not know until retailers provide Ottawa with information about what weapons they have in stock so the government can match that with the list Ukraine provided.
When asked for comment and additional details following the announcement, neither the department nor Blair’s office provided a public statement by deadline.
The announcement came last week as Ottawa outlined another 324 firearms that it outlawed, contending they belong on the battlefield instead of in Canadian homes.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Dec. 9, 2024.
Kyle Duggan, The Canadian Press
