Ontario Solicitor General Michael Kerzner said on Monday his government hasn't decided yet whether the province will join others in resisting the federal government’s firearm buyback program.
“At this point, we’re studying what’s best for Ontario,” said Kerzner, who Premier Doug Ford appointed solicitor general a few weeks after Ford's election on June 2.
READ MORE: Alberta won’t enforce federal firearms ban, justice minister says
Federal Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino wrote to the provincial governments in August asking them to help implement Ottawa's forthcoming buyback program. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's government has been working on the details of the plan since announcing the ban of 1,500 "assault-style" firearms and attachments shortly after 22 people were killed in a shooting rampage in Nova Scotia in 2020. It's set a deadline of October 2023 for owners of now-banned firearms to turn them over to the government.
Last week, Alberta Solicitor General Tyler Shandro said the United Conservative Party government wouldn’t direct provincial policing resources toward helping the federal government follow through in buying back firearms it banned a couple of years ago.
“We will not tolerate taking officers off the streets in order to confiscate the property of law-abiding firearms owners,” Shandro was quoted as saying by the Toronto Sun.
Within the next few days, cabinet ministers in Saskatchewan and Manitoba stated they intend to take similar positions as Alberta, as the National Post reported.
Christine Tell, the minister of corrections, policing and public safety for the conservative-leaning Saskatchewan Party government, wrote to the highest-ranking RCMP officer in the province instructing them not to do as the federal government has asked.
“The Government of Saskatchewan does not support and will not authorize the use of provincially funded resources for any process that is connected to the federal government’s proposed ‘buyback’ of these firearms,” Tell wrote, according to the National Post.
Kelvin Goertzen, the attorney general for Manitoba's Progressive Conservative government, wrote in a Facebook post that he also told Mendicino that his province was not on board with the plan.
“In Manitoba’s view, any buyback program cannot further erode precious provincial police resources,” Goertzen wrote.
Following an unrelated announcement in Toronto on Monday, QP Briefing asked Kerzner three times if Ontario would align itself with Alberta, Manitoba and Saskatchewan, or if it would do as the federal government hopes.
“We’re continuing to study (the buyback plan). I look forward to speaking to my counterparts in Western Canada. It’s something that I’ll do in the days ahead,” Kerzner said.
Kerzner also repeated a few times that the federal government needs to increase measures at Canada's border to restrict illegal firearms from entering the country, as Ontario's Progressive Conservatives have long been asking.
On Sunday on CTV's Question Period, Mendicino said Shandro is pulling a "political stunt," called the Alberta minister's positioning "reckless" and insisted that jurisdictional powers of the federal government will prevent provinces from boycotting enforcing the buyback plan, as some have said they will.
The federal and provincial ministers responsible for justice and public safety are meeting later this October, Kerzner and Goertzen both said.
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