EDMONTON, Alberta (LifeSiteNews) — The province of Alberta has said the federal government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau should allow a measure of “decency” and extend the amnesty phase of its much-maligned gun-buyback scheme.
Alberta Justice Minister Tyler Shandro said in a statement this Tuesday that “Ottawa appears to be lost,” especially given their “latest attack on hunting rifles and shotguns.”
“At minimum, they should proactively extend the amnesty that is currently scheduled to end in October 2023,” continued Shandro.
“Such a decision, however, would involve showing Canadian firearms owners a measure of decency, something that Minister Mendicino and this federal government is seemingly incapable of,” he quipped.
A total of five Canadian jurisdictions – four provinces and one territory – have announced their opposition to Trudeau’s federal buyback schemes.
The governments of Alberta and Saskatchewan have gone as far as introducing legislation that will ensure their governments alone are responsible for enforcing federal gun laws.
Shandro said right before Christmas that firearms enforcement in his province is “our constitutional jurisdiction, and this is a choice that we get to make.”
“It’s not a negotiation with the federal government,” he added.
In his statement Tuesday, Shandro skewered the Trudeau’s Liberals for not even having “figured out how to implement their firearms confiscation program.”
“This admission comes shortly after the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police called on the federal government to not use police services to confiscate firearms,” he noted.
Last week, reports surfaced that the Trudeau government is now looking at potentially hiring “third parties” to execute its much-panned gun buyback scheme as a result of this provincial pushback.
Despite intense public opposition, there are some provinces that seem intent on following the Trudeau government’s plan.
Earlier this week it was reported that the federal government will begin a pilot project to buy back people who legally purchased firearms in the nation’s smallest province, Prince Edward Island (PEI).
Reacting to these reports, Shandro said that a federal “memo” he has seen “admits that efforts to find private sector companies to implement the federal firearms confiscation program failed this summer.”
“With no private sector companies willing to participate, the memo outlines how the RCMP will first be deployed to Prince Edward Island (PEI), which has been deemed to be an easy ‘low-risk’ target,” he noted.
The minister also blasted the “pilot” program as a fool’s errand, tantamount to a system of “trial and error” that is racking up “billions of dollars” at the expense of taxpayers.
Critics have long blasted Trudeau’s gun grab efforts, with most of the recent ire being directed at his government’s Bill C-21.
Much of this controversy arose because Bill C-21 was initially introduced by the Trudeau government under the guise of restricting handgun sales, and the Trudeau government only added certain hunting rifles to the list of banned firearms under C-21 after the debate period of the bill had concluded.
The last-minute additions were blasted by Indigenous Canadians, hunters, farmers, and opposition MPs as a crass attempt to try and ban most guns and take them away from their legal owners.
After initially denying his bill would impact hunters, Trudeau last month admitted that C-21 would indeed ban certain types of hunting rifles.
While the Trudeau government is standing by the controversial bill, C-21 has faced rare bipartisan pushback, ultimately leading to the legislation being placed on hold until well into 2023.