As many firearm owners are aware, the federal government recently conducted a pilot project for its “Firearm Buyback Program.” Some details of this pilot have now been released publicly—and the results are surprising.
The pilot took place in Cape Breton between September and November 2025 and cost Canadian taxpayers $23,759. The goal was to collect 200 firearms during this period. Unsurprisingly, the project fell far short of that target, with only 11 to 22 firearms collected. It’s unclear why such a small number couldn’t be accurately counted.
For 2025–2026, the firearm buyback program in the Cape Breton Regional Municipality has been budgeted at $126,001. While this is a significant amount of taxpayer funding, it is modest compared to the allocations for the City of Winnipeg and the Winnipeg Police Service: $287,850 for 2024–2025 (despite no reported firearms collected so far) and $2,540,061 budgeted for 2025–2026.
Currently, the Cape Breton Regional Police and the Winnipeg Police Service are the only police departments in Canada that have agreed to implement the firearm buyback program. Other departments have raised concerns about the program’s design, arguing that it targets law-abiding firearm owners rather than criminals.
