Lawsuits pile up against Liberals’ firearms ban

Legal challenges against the Liberal government’s firearms ban are beginning to pile up, with five separate lawsuits now challenging the constitutionality of a sweeping prohibition that infuriated gun owners and retailers.

The five challenges, filed in federal court, claim that the government under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau contravened the Firearms Act when it immediately outlawed more than 1,500 firearms through regulatory decree rather than a legislative process.

The Liberal government enforced the ban on May 1 through an order in council.

Lawyers representing the applicants say the five lawsuits could potentially be consolidated into a single constitutional challenge, which would amount to one of the largest legal cases involving firearms in recent memory, involving lobby groups, gun sellers and individual owners.

Provincial leaders, including Alberta Premier Jason Kenney, are also considering joining the legal battle against Ottawa.

A notice of application for one of the challenges, a classaction lawsuit on behalf of nine individuals, argues that governments cannot use an order in council to outlaw firearms that are used for sporting or hunting purposes, which would include the vast majority of firearms listed in the May 1 directive.

“The [government] does not have unfettered discretion to prohibit firearms by OrderIn-Council,” the court document says.

The application also alleges that the Trudeau government sidestepped proper legislative processes, saying the ban was “promulgated at a time when the Parliament of Canada was not having regular sittings due to the COVID-19 pandemic, thereby shielding the government from parliamentary scrutiny.”

The allegations, which cite similar arguments to those in the other four cases, also claim that the Liberal government’s use of the term “assault-style weapons” has no legal definition or meaning, and can therefore be unfairly applied to a long list of firearms based on arbitrary characterizations.

“This language is confusing and deliberately misleading, as all assault firearms have been prohibited since 1977,” the court document says.

Ottawa used the term “assault-style weapons” to outlaw much of the AR-15 and AR-10 rifles that were prohibited as of May 1. The semi-automatic rifles were previously classified as restricted. The AR-15 has never been used in a mass shooting in Canada but has gained widespread recognition for its usage in several U.S. massacres.

Many gun owners and lobby groups argue that the ban targets law-abiding gun owners, while the majority of gun violence continues to be committed by organized crime, which tends to use illegal firearms. Supporters of gun control largely supported the prohibition but said the order in council did not go far enough.

The Liberal government has repeatedly claimed that the order in council explicitly targets firearms not used for hunting or sporting purposes.

“You don’t need an AR-15 to bring down a deer,” Trudeau said when he made the announcement May 1.

But that rationale “directly contradicted” a section in the government’s own regulatory directive that provided two-year amnesty to any gun owner who used their firearms for sustenance, according to the notice of application in the lawsuit.

A recent survey by the Ontario Federation of Anglers and Hunters, meanwhile, found that the vast majority of rifles outlawed under the order in council are used for either sport shooting or hunting. Out of a total 64 firearms listed in the survey, respondents said they used 82 per cent of them for hunting, and 92 per cent for sport, like target shooting, formal competitions or skeet shooting.

Other plaintiffs challenging the ban include a Haida Nation hunter and trapper, two Alberta firearms manufacturers, the lobby group Canadian Coalition for Firearm Rights (CCFR), and the founder of Manitoba-based retail company Wolverine Supplies, among others. Two of the legal challenges were filed in Toronto, two in Ottawa, and one in Calgary

Plaintiffs under the class-action suit say they got involved to “push back” against what they view as a rushed and arbitrary regulatory process.