Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc’s department has hired forensic auditors to assess risks of a costly and unpopular gun buyback scheme, per Blacklock’s Reporter. Staff would not comment to the publication on the anticipated millions in fraud and waste through the $756 million “national compensation program,” scheduled for 2025, nor provide copies of the bidding documents, including statements of work. “The Department of Public Safety has a requirement to perform a fraud risk assessment of a national compensation program targeting businesses and individuals,” the department wrote in a notice to forensic auditors.“Working with a team of dedicated stakeholders, the external firm is expected to undertake a systematic and thorough process to identify, evaluate and help address internal and external fraud vulnerabilities related to the national compensation program.”“There are security requirements associated with this requirement.” Auditors would be hired in August with a risk assessment due in eight months, it said.Despite the department refusing to disclose statements of work and other related billing documents, the contractors’ timeline coincides with the promised 2025 launch of LeBlanc’s federal buyback of prohibited firearms. A current amnesty period expires October 30, 2025.Cabinet in 2020 enacted Regulations Prescribing Certain Firearms that banned some 1,500 high-powered firearms. The Department of Public Safety has repeatedly postponed enforcement of the order due to stiff resistance and concerns over costs.“If we take the estimate for example of 150,000 to 200,000 of these weapons that would be surrendered and for which compensation would be paid on an average price, and we’ve done some calculation on this of approximately $1,300 per firearm, the estimate is somewhere between $300 million and $400 million,” then-Public Safety Minister Bill Blair told reporters in 2020. “But it really depends on knowing exactly how many of these firearms are currently possessed in Canada.”The Parliamentary Budget Office in a 2021 report said costs could run as high as $756 million. “There remain too many outstanding questions,” said an analysts’ report. Analysts noted a similar 2019 program in New Zealand cost twice its original estimate, a total $155 million to recover 61,322 firearms. The New Zealand experiment failed to determine “how effective the overall program was,” said Cost Estimate.Minister LeBlanc in testimony last October 23 at the Senate National Security Committee acknowledged the buyback program was unpopular. “Every time governments or parliament legislate in this area there is a very quick reaction from hunting groups and sports shooters, many of whom are in my constituency in rural New Brunswick,” said LeBlanc.“People I know go hunting.”
Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc’s department has hired forensic auditors to assess risks of a costly and unpopular gun buyback scheme, per Blacklock’s Reporter. Staff would not comment to the publication on the anticipated millions in fraud and waste through the $756 million “national compensation program,” scheduled for 2025, nor provide copies of the bidding documents, including statements of work. “The Department of Public Safety has a requirement to perform a fraud risk assessment of a national compensation program targeting businesses and individuals,” the department wrote in a notice to forensic auditors.“Working with a team of dedicated stakeholders, the external firm is expected to undertake a systematic and thorough process to identify, evaluate and help address internal and external fraud vulnerabilities related to the national compensation program.”“There are security requirements associated with this requirement.” Auditors would be hired in August with a risk assessment due in eight months, it said.Despite the department refusing to disclose statements of work and other related billing documents, the contractors’ timeline coincides with the promised 2025 launch of LeBlanc’s federal buyback of prohibited firearms. A current amnesty period expires October 30, 2025.Cabinet in 2020 enacted Regulations Prescribing Certain Firearms that banned some 1,500 high-powered firearms. The Department of Public Safety has repeatedly postponed enforcement of the order due to stiff resistance and concerns over costs.“If we take the estimate for example of 150,000 to 200,000 of these weapons that would be surrendered and for which compensation would be paid on an average price, and we’ve done some calculation on this of approximately $1,300 per firearm, the estimate is somewhere between $300 million and $400 million,” then-Public Safety Minister Bill Blair told reporters in 2020. “But it really depends on knowing exactly how many of these firearms are currently possessed in Canada.”The Parliamentary Budget Office in a 2021 report said costs could run as high as $756 million. “There remain too many outstanding questions,” said an analysts’ report. Analysts noted a similar 2019 program in New Zealand cost twice its original estimate, a total $155 million to recover 61,322 firearms. The New Zealand experiment failed to determine “how effective the overall program was,” said Cost Estimate.Minister LeBlanc in testimony last October 23 at the Senate National Security Committee acknowledged the buyback program was unpopular. “Every time governments or parliament legislate in this area there is a very quick reaction from hunting groups and sports shooters, many of whom are in my constituency in rural New Brunswick,” said LeBlanc.“People I know go hunting.”
