Gun control group urges PM Carney to ensure ‘timely delivery’ on firearm commitments

OTTAWA — A prominent gun control group is urging Prime Minister Mark Carney to swiftly implement Liberal election promises on firearms and avoid the foot-dragging that left many pledges under the previous government unfulfilled.

In a letter to Carney, PolySeSouvient says the mandate for the next public safety minister should include a commitment to “timely delivery” of planned reforms, especially the buyback of banned firearms.

PolySeSouvient includes students and graduates of Montreal’s École Polytechnique, where a gunman killed 14 women in 1989.

Since May 2020, the Liberal government has banned more than 2,500 varieties of what it calls assault-style firearms — semi-automatics with sustained rapid-fire capability.

During the recent election campaign, PolySeSouvient said Carney’s Liberals were the ones most likely to bring in additional measures to prevent firearm-related violence.

Carney promised to implement an efficient buyback of banned guns and to ensure that classification of new firearm models entering the market is determined by the RCMP and not the gun industry. He also pledged to automatically revoke gun licences from people convicted of violent offences, increase the capacity to track down crime guns and toughen oversight of firearms licensing.

The Conservatives vowed to repeal Liberal measures the party sees as an attack on licensed, law-abiding hunters and sport shooters.

Government officials say some 19,000 unique makes and models of non-restricted firearms remain available for hunting or sport shooting in Canada.

PolySeSouvient’s letter says “all the necessary conditions” are in place for Carney to meet Canadians’ expectations on gun control.

“All that remains is to appoint a minister who is up to the task, along with a clear mandate,” it says.

Carney is set to unveil his new cabinet Tuesday after securing a minority mandate in the April 28 election.

Nathalie Provost, who was shot at Polytechnique and has long worked with the group, ran successfully for the Liberals in a Quebec riding.

PolySeSouvient’s letter, dated last Friday, is copied to others, including Provost, current Public Safety Minister David McGuinty and Rachel Bendayan, a former associate public safety minister.

The group says the new public safety minister should be directed to:

— build an incentive package in the buyback program to encourage early compliance;

— conduct meaningful consultations with stakeholders before draft bills, regulations, directives and public education campaigns are made public;

— immediately launch an investigation into the classification of the SKS, a rifle that has been used in mass and police shootings, to find a solution that protects public safety and respects Indigenous rights to hunt;

— eliminate all loopholes, exemptions and exceptions related to magazine capacity.

At the dissolution of Parliament in March, the Liberals were still implementing some elements of gun control legislation that had already received royal assent, including provisions to better respond to cases of firearm-related violence involving intimate partners and families.

PolySeSouvient has asked Carney to avoid a phenomenon it claims to have seen over the last decade — the watering-down of planned or adopted gun measures “through neglect or ineffective or counterproductive regulations.”

The group says that legislation approved by Parliament includes a measure sought by gun control and women’s groups for years — an automatic prohibition on firearms ownership for those subject to a protection order related to domestic violence or stalking.

But recently tabled enabling regulations arbitrarily exclude orders that are not civil in nature, such as peace bonds made under section 810 of the Criminal Code, PolySeSouvient says.

“This exemption is incomprehensible and illogical, in addition to being incompatible with the legislative intent and the letter of the law,” the letter to Carney says. “The exclusion should be immediately removed.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 12, 2025.

Jim Bronskill, The Canadian Press