Federal Public Safety Minister Marco Medicino says the Kenney government is acting in a “reckless” way by telling the Alberta RCMP to ignore orders to participate in the Liberals’ gun grab scheme.
Alberta announced Monday it would not aid the Trudeau Liberals in confiscating the roughly 30,000 firearms registered in Alberta and affected by the ban. The province likewise told the Alberta RCMP that the so-called buyback program is not a provincial priority and is therefore an inappropriate use of police resources.
Mendicino said Alberta’s response is “an abdication of that vital responsibility.”
“The courts have repeatedly confirmed that regulating firearms falls squarely within federal jurisdiction,” he said in a statement.
“Albertans expect their federal and provincial governments to work together to protect their communities, not pull dangerous stunts.”
In May 2020, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced he was banning more than 1,500 models of firearms, including AR-15s. The Liberals said they plan on spending up to $250 million buying the guns.
Alberta Justice Minister Tyler Shandro said Monday any attempt from Ottawa to have the RCMP
serve as confiscation agents would result in the province invoking the dispute resolution clause in Article 23 of the Provincial Police Service Agreement.
“Alberta taxpayers pay over $750 million per year for the RCMP and we will not tolerate taking officers off the streets, in order to confiscate the property of law-abiding firearms owners,” he said.
In response to Medicino’s criticism, Shandro said the minister “appears to have not watched the press conference or read the two news releases that were issued.”
“Alberta has been informally advised that the commanding officer of Alberta’s RCMP does not support the use of provincial resources to administer the federal government’s confiscation program,” he said in a statement.
“Despite these objections, we expect the federal Liberals will again use the RCMP for their own political purposes — just as they did when they politicized the mass shooting in Nova Scotia in order to bolster their case for the same pending firearms ban.”
The Saskatchewan government on Wednesday said it will follow Alberta’s lead in telling the RCMP to ignore orders from the Trudeau Liberals to confiscate citizen’s legally-purchased firearms.
The provincial Firearms Officer Robert Freberg told the John Gormley Show that the Saskwatchewan government will not authorize the use of provincially-funded resources of any type for the federal government’s confiscation program.
Alberta will also seek to intervene in six ongoing judicial review applications challenging the constitutionality of the federal firearm prohibition legislation.
