OTTAWA (LifeSiteNews) – Canada’s Governor General reaffirmed the Liberal Party’s aim of confiscating “assault-style” weapons from citizens, as well as their intentions to work with provinces who wish to ban handguns.  

In her 2021 Speech from the Throne on November 23, Governor General of Canada Mary Simon, the Queen’s representative, restated the Liberal Party’s plan to confiscate so-called “assault-style” weapons from law-abiding citizens through a mandatory buyback program, as well as aiding provincial and territorial governments in their efforts to revoke the ownership of handguns. The speech opened the first session of the 44th Parliament.  

“Gun violence is on the rise in many of our biggest cities, while investing in prevention and supporting the work of law enforcement, we must also continue to strengthen gun control,” Simon stated.  

“The Government will now put forward measures like a mandatory buyback of banned assault-style weapons and move forward with any province or territory that wants to ban handguns.” 

While the homicide rate in Canada did increase by 20 percent between 2013 and 2016, Statistics Canada indicated that “this was driven” by a “substantive increase (+68%)” of gang-related murders and not a surge of law-abiding gun owners taking up arms. 

The Liberal Party’s attack on gun ownership began in May of 2020, when Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced that over 1,500 models of “assault-style” weapons were to be banned immediately. While the order instantly prohibited citizens from selling, transporting, importing, or using the guns, people who already owned any of the “banned” weapons could choose either to take part in the “buyback” program or to permit their guns to be confiscated without compensation after their deaths. In either instance, the guns cannot ever be used. 

Currently, the deadline for the mandatory “buyback” program, in which an individual surrenders their guns in exchange for “fair compensation,” has an approaching deadline of April 30, 2022.  

Despite gun crimes representing less than one percent of all reported crimes in Canada, and despite so-called “assault-style” weapons being commonly used for hunting and sport shooting, Trudeau has insisted, “These weapons were designed for one purpose and one purpose only: to kill the largest number of people in the shortest amount of time,” and that there “is no use and no place for such weapons in Canada.”