Here’s something quick that just came up.
Once up a time (May 1, 2020 to be precise) the Liberal government banned some 2,000 specific assault-style firearms and related components so Canadians should “feel safe in their communities”. At the same time, they announced an amnesty for owners of such weapons until the details of a buyback program could be finalized.
In a nice piece of reporting, CTV News recently noted that over the course of the four years since the ban, at least $67 million dollars has been spent on the program. But not so much as a single firearm has been taken out of circulation. Whatever you think about the ban itself, that’s pretty shabby governance.
The report quoted Senate opposition leader Donald Plett saying "that $11 million of taxpayers hard-earned money has been given out to external consultants.” And that “Those contracts need to be made public".
Well Donald Plett and CTV news may not be aware of this, but the contracts have - for the most part at least - been public all along. And the article inspired me to take a look for myself.
According to government open data, Public Safety Canada awarded at least five contracts relating to the buyback program. QMR Staffing Solutions got $24,958 for "strategic advice and support" for program implementation, ALTIS Human Resources got $23,504 for "project management services", and IBM Canada won three separate contracts worth a total of $6,500,608 for "Compensation Model and Program Design Options".
Those two staffing contracts look perfectly normal and, in any case, are far too small to worry about. But $6.5 million worth of “management consulting” from IBM?
After a $481,851 amendment, the largest of those contracts ended up being worth $3.75 million and was delivered by May 31, 2023.
The “compensation model” part of the description would seem to call for the creation of a data lookup tool containing reasonable surrender values for each of the banned items. The “program design” spec could be the software necessary for the lookup tool itself, along with various integrations into existing government infrastructure.
Without more information it’s impossible to assess whether we were overcharged for those services. But I suppose we should be grateful the final bill didn’t reach the $60 million ArriveCAN contractors billed us for what might have been an even simpler application package.
As one of 2.2 Million licenced firearms owners I won't begin to feel 'safe' until after the next election.
The Firearms Buyback Program is 99.99999% virtue signaling and 0.00001% safety assurance. The progress in implementation is emblematic of state efficiency but given the goals and motivations of the Jacobins and Bolsheviks involved we should be thankful of their near stasis level of accomplishment. Unlimited government, if efficient, is the very definition of dystopia.