Alberta Defends Firearms Owners’ Rights

Corrected Transcript:

We currently have a Public Safety Minister who wants to take away my legally obtained firearms—firearms that I took a safety course for and legally purchased. Yet he can’t even define a Restricted Possession and Acquisition License. He has excused himself from ties to a terrorist organization, the Tamil Tigers.

I will not be handing my firearms over to the federal government. I’m not supposed to give my firearms to criminals, so I’m not going to. As a result, I can’t go to the range, I can’t use my firearms for sport shooting—90% of them—because I became a criminal overnight through an unjust gun grab and fraud.

I know Premier Smith is familiar with the case of a homeowner in Ontario who was charged after injuring a home intruder armed with a crossbow. You should ask her about it. Canadians are being charged for protecting themselves, their families, and their property. We’re being backed into a corner through submission by the federal government. We’re being told to leave our keys beside the unlocked door because criminals have more rights than we do.

So where would the Alberta police stand in relation to firearms?

Premier Smith’s Response:
Let me tell you my perspective on this. The proper use of the Criminal Code is to regulate criminal behavior. Take vehicular homicide, for example: there are ways to use a car to kill someone, and that carries criminal penalties. But what they don’t do is say, “Red cars are disproportionately involved in accidents, therefore we’re going to ban red cars and confiscate them.” Instead, they regulate the criminal use of cars while still allowing us to have driver’s licenses and register vehicles.

I’ll extend that analogy further: with firearms, the federal government should target the criminal use of them—the people breaking into homes with crossbows—not law-abiding owners. Then we, at the provincial level, regulate the legal use of firearms. That means Albertans can continue to own them, collect them, use them for sport shooting, for hunting, and for other legal purposes.

Right now, we’re working on a legislative framework for an Alberta firearms license. We’re going to fight this out, because property and civil rights fall under provincial jurisdiction in Sections 91 and 92 of the Constitution. As you’ve seen, we’ve already taken action:
• We told municipalities they cannot ban handguns, because that is not their jurisdiction.
• We told the RCMP they cannot participate in the confiscation scheme.
• We told our sheriffs and municipal forces that if they want to participate in the confiscation scheme, they must get a permit from the Justice Minister—and I have it on good authority that he will not grant such permits.

There is still a loophole: the federal government could try to use mail delivery services to transport confiscated firearms. We’re going to change our legislation to close that gap.

We’ve passed our own Firearms Act, and we’ll do everything possible to make it extremely difficult for anyone to participate in the confiscation program. That’s within our authority to regulate professions. You’ll see Alberta and Saskatchewan working together to defend firearms owners’ rights.

We know there’s a deadline approaching, so please be patient. We understand how important this is, and we’re committed to protecting your rights. Alberta is simply taking a different approach, one that we believe the Constitution allows. We’ll see what the courts ultimately decide.