Juno News - July 12, 2021


Episode 2： Gun Business Under Fire ｜ Assaulted


Episode Stats

Length

19 minutes

Words per Minute

164.58258

Word Count

3,172

Sentence Count

135


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 When we think of firearms ownership it's easy to think of that end user that takes the gun to the
00:00:09.440 range and fires a few rounds at a target. But to get a gun in the hands of a law-abiding firearms
00:00:14.720 owner often follows a complex and lengthy chain involving manufacturing, distribution, shipping,
00:00:20.560 and retailing. All of these are businesses that form the Canadian firearms industry. An industry
00:00:26.640 responsible for 8.5 billion dollars into the Canadian economy each year and the creation of 50,000
00:00:33.280 jobs. These are people that work in retail outlets, people that work at Canada's many ranges and gun
00:00:38.960 clubs and those involved in the import and distribution and in some cases manufacturing
00:00:44.640 of firearms domestically. Despite being such a robust industry the firearms sector has been absent from
00:00:51.760 the government's discussions and consultations about the Order and Council and Bill C-21. In many cases
00:00:58.320 firearms business owners have been left sitting on hundreds of thousands of dollars in inventory
00:01:03.440 that the Liberal government made illegal overnight with no recourse for businesses that invested
00:01:08.880 millions of dollars into buying it. One of those businesses is Accuracy Plus just outside of
00:01:14.800 Peterborough, Ontario. Jeff Toomes is the manager. A lot of these firearms that became prohibited were
00:01:20.480 extremely popular models. So overnight we had tens of thousands of dollars of inventory that now that
00:01:28.320 we can do nothing with and I guess I got wrapped up in a little bit because to add insult to injury here
00:01:34.880 like when the Order of Council came in May the 1st I read the directive in the abstract and I'm paraphrasing
00:01:41.200 here but in there it said you know the government realizes that you know business owners sales may be
00:01:46.560 affected because certain firearms have become prohibited and they should gear towards selling stuff that
00:01:51.520 isn't prohibited. So to use a specific model the Dairy MK-12 good seller for us. There's a Typhoon that's very
00:02:00.080 very similar only different and it was not in the original Order and Council so I thought oh okay here's
00:02:06.880 a model that we can now sell in place of that and so I phoned up the distributor and it's one we had not
00:02:11.840 dealt with beforehand so had no previous history with so we had to prepay up front. So about the
00:02:17.120 first week of May I ordered a bunch of these Typhoons and they arrived I think May the 12th and I didn't
00:02:26.160 even get the cellophane off the skid and May the 15th they became prohibited. So in that time frame we got
00:02:32.800 further wrapped up into it. You know you prohibited stuff and made inventory obsolete and dead for us.
00:02:38.640 We geared towards using your Order and Council in the abstract in there and taking it in good faith.
00:02:44.400 We buy some more stuff that we can sell and then you just make it prohibited again. Like how is it
00:02:50.320 that you want us to do business in this you know in this environment? How do you expect us to survive?
00:02:56.640 So how is a business like yours supposed to operate when anything that you sell could one day
00:03:03.440 be illegal? On eggshells take it a day at a time. I visited Jeff's store one year after the Liberals
00:03:09.680 Order and Council and there in his warehouse were tens of thousands of dollars of now prohibited firearms
00:03:15.600 they're illegal to sell or to use and cannot even be sold back to the government despite the promise
00:03:20.720 of a buyback. It's a rule of retail if you're not moving inventory you're losing money. Something felt
00:03:26.880 by a lot of the gun store owners I heard from is that this is a feature not a bug of the Liberals gun
00:03:32.160 measures. You know we're sitting on inventory right now that we can't sell and that's tying up a lot
00:03:37.920 of dollars which in retail is is a cardinal sin the the biggest sin in retail is not to turn your
00:03:42.880 inventory over so you know it it's created some financial hardship and but I try not to complain
00:03:51.200 about it too much because I know I'm not alone. I know that every other business whether you're a
00:03:54.960 wholesaler or distributor in the country has been affected. I liken it to the automotive industry and
00:04:01.200 imagine you own a car lot and Environment Canada walks onto your lot one day and says
00:04:06.320 we're banning V8s and by the way you can't sell them they have to sit on your lot and maybe someday
00:04:12.400 two or three maybe four years down the road we might pay you costs we might pay you retail or we
00:04:17.280 just might be a flat amount we're going to give you but in the meantime all the parts that you have for
00:04:21.520 them and your vehicles are tied up so as retailers and wholesalers that's where we're at right now
00:04:26.480 our inventory inventory is tied up that we can't sell it your entire business model has been
00:04:30.880 destroyed and there's a lot of people out there unfortunately in this country we're in that
00:04:34.800 situation right now because of the OIC. For Scott Carpenter it isn't just about guns like any small
00:04:40.960 business owner Scott's store is his livelihood it's how he supports his family. The main thing in the
00:04:46.560 meantime is to keep my business as healthy as possible it's a it's a family business so it pays my
00:04:51.360 mortgage and pays my my medical insurance and keeps my daughter healthy so I have a young girl
00:04:56.800 who has what we call a rare disease and one of the things the business has always done is backstopped
00:05:02.800 her health because there's been times when we've had issues with insurance or government health care
00:05:07.040 and the business has had to backstop her medication so you know my main concern and focus technically is
00:05:13.440 really my family so I'll do whatever I need to do with the business to keep it moving forward and make
00:05:17.920 sure that everyone in my house is taken care of. While not being allowed to sell certain products
00:05:22.400 has no doubt irked gun retailers the biggest issue is the lack of engagement in developing these measures
00:05:28.640 and the lack of support or even notification when they're put in place. Alison DeGroote is the
00:05:33.840 managing director of the Canadian Shooting Arms and Ammunition Association a group that seeks to give
00:05:39.360 the firearms industry a voice. Under the current government she's had her work cut out for her.
00:05:44.560 It's extremely difficult our businesses are adapting as best they could so these are businesses
00:05:51.200 that went into a pandemic environment that then had a huge swath of their inventory affected by a piece
00:05:58.640 of legislation and no response from government on how to comply on what they could bring in to replace
00:06:05.440 the lost income. We have another piece of legislation just introduced that wipes out or could potentially
00:06:11.200 wipe out another category of their income it has just been and the lack of communication and the
00:06:16.960 lack of technical expertise even in implementing these it's one thing to have a political agenda it's
00:06:23.360 another thing how that trickles down into the real life livelihood of somebody operating a business and
00:06:29.760 trying to comply with the legislation. The attacks on gun business owners are particularly puzzling when
00:06:35.600 you look at how much of a positive impact the firearms industry has on the Canadian economy and local
00:06:41.200 economies. Sports shooting and hunting are responsible for billions of dollars into the
00:06:46.080 Canadian economy each year not to mention tens of thousands of jobs. Some of those jobs are in
00:06:51.840 Lakefield Ontario at one of two Savage Arms production facilities in the world. Savage Arms' Canadian
00:06:58.560 plant is now in its 51st year manufacturing 1300 to 1400 rifles daily which are sold in Canada and around
00:07:06.800 the world on the civilian market. We do everything we drill the barrel we machine the parts it's advanced
00:07:13.600 manufacturing we're really providing all kinds of level of skill sets from just general machine operators
00:07:21.360 right up to design engineers and programmers and metrology engineers so all the tools of advanced
00:07:29.440 manufacturing. Prosperity at Savage Canada creates regional prosperity in the area because you know we're
00:07:36.800 buying our synthetic stocks from a local provider here in Peterborough called Merit Precision. We buy another
00:07:44.720 small amount of synthetic stocks from Oneida molded plastics which are just about two hours
00:07:50.800 again I said a hundred mile radius. We're spending millions of dollars in Belleville. We're spending
00:07:57.440 hundreds of thousands and millions of dollars in Scarborough and Whitby, Ajax, you know.
00:08:04.240 Well in Ottawa and in the media guns may be subjected to misunderstandings and political attacks.
00:08:10.240 In Lakefield Savage Arms is part of the community. Many of the plant's almost 170 employees have been there for
00:08:16.800 years. Local MPs have toured the plant they have a presence at community events but when decisions are
00:08:22.880 being made they still feel excluded. You know we're the only industry that gets no consultation no not
00:08:32.000 allowed on any government committees. When would you ever think of anyone on the um you know and any kind
00:08:38.800 other industry completely ignored by the Canadian government. This lack of communication from the government is
00:08:46.080 something that was consistently reported by pretty much every gun owner I spoke to in the course of producing
00:08:51.440 this documentary. A lack of communication is the rule and not the exception and it isn't just a minor
00:08:58.880 inconvenience either. It can cost from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars depending
00:09:05.360 on the nature of the business. I spoke in Okotoks Alberta with Adam Patterson and Terry Korth of Korth Group.
00:09:11.920 The 44 year old Korth Group is a very successful distribution company in Canada selling to large
00:09:17.600 numbers of independent retailers and also law enforcement and government agencies. There's a good
00:09:22.720 chance that any firearm in Canada you've legally handled pass through this facility in Okotoks.
00:09:28.480 And even as a company that does a lot of business with various arms of the government,
00:09:32.960 they find themselves scrambling to keep up with the latest changes. And more importantly,
00:09:37.280 the onus is on them to make sure they aren't missing something. We were probably stuck with
00:09:43.600 between $80,000 and $100,000 worth of inventory that we have here that is dead. It's here and it'll stay
00:09:54.080 here until such time as we decide what to do. A lot of them, you know, we can still sell into law
00:10:02.400 enforcement agencies. Unfortunately, a lot of that product is not geared to that market.
00:10:08.240 So it's pretty much just dead and it'll sit here until we, you know, make a decision what to do with
00:10:14.160 it. As a major business in the firearms sector, has the federal government reached out to you in its
00:10:19.680 consultations on this about the on the ground implications of some of these restrictions?
00:10:24.160 No. Never.
00:10:25.120 Never? You've never gotten a phone call, not even from your local MP?
00:10:28.960 No. No.
00:10:30.800 Well, and we don't want to be afraid of what ifs because we need to run our business and operate
00:10:36.080 the way we feel is appropriate for the market. But one component of the change we've seen since last
00:10:41.120 May is the additional firearms that have been added to that Order and Council list and backdated to May 1st,
00:10:46.960 even though they might have been prohibited in August of last year. And there's no notice given to
00:10:51.200 anybody involved in the process. So we could have a shipment of firearms coming to the border and all of a
00:10:56.160 sudden the guns on that shipment are now deemed to be prohibited. And we're not notified until
00:11:00.480 customs would reach out to say that this shipment's been seized. And that has happened to two other
00:11:05.440 distributors that we have good relationships with at the point of entry when the product was coming
00:11:10.000 across the border. Whether a tip-off was sent to the feds or how it happened, those guns were prohibited
00:11:15.600 on route to the distributor.
00:11:16.880 So you, as a distributor, are not notified when a product you carry is added to the prohibited list?
00:11:24.080 Exactly. No.
00:11:25.200 The onus is on us to check the firearms reference table daily prior to every shipment that comes from all of our
00:11:31.840 vendors. There's no set mandate from the government on how we're supposed to access the information
00:11:36.960 because they do not let us know.
00:11:38.880 Meanwhile, Andrew, the manufacturer wants to be paid for their product. So in a lot of cases,
00:11:45.920 you pay for that product. So if it's a half a million dollar shipment, you have to pay for it.
00:11:51.840 And you can't do anything with it. It's sitting in limbo, incurring more and more charges.
00:11:57.280 When you think of a firearms manufacturer, you more than likely conjure up an image in your mind of a
00:12:02.160 huge industrial factory, a Smith and Wesson, a Ruger or a Savage Arms.
00:12:07.200 But Maccabee Defense is literally a mom and pop operation, a factory built in a farm in rural
00:12:13.360 Alberta. The singers created Maccabee Defense with a very simple mandate to build the type of firearm
00:12:19.360 they felt was missing from the landscape. They're lifelong gun owners. As rural Albertans, it's a part of
00:12:24.720 their way of life. But they felt there was a need for a modular non-restricted firearm that could be
00:12:30.080 used among many applications for hunting. It was important to them, knowing their clientele,
00:12:36.080 that they had a non-restricted firearm because of the way those are used on farms, on ranches
00:12:42.080 and in other forms. They invested tens of thousands of dollars of their own savings, converted their barn
00:12:48.480 and learned how to be machinists for the sole purpose of building the SLR Multi. Business was booming
00:12:55.680 from the moment they introduced the firearm. We were trying to target the younger crowd who
00:13:01.200 was a lot newer to shooting, who didn't necessarily know all of the actual functions and features of a
00:13:07.280 rifle and where they were positioned. So what we wanted to try and do was go back to the basics of
00:13:12.800 trying to make something that was easier to learn, easier to use and a lot safer to use in that
00:13:17.920 transitional period. So your plan was to turn this into a full-time business for both of you, right?
00:13:22.560 Well, the plan was to turn our main source of income into something that we were passionate about.
00:13:28.400 We just knew that doing something that we didn't like for too long was going to be a very bad thing
00:13:32.720 for us. So when did you quit your jobs? I think it was two weeks after that official prototype.
00:13:38.480 So what was the trajectory then from when you first sold and started producing to when the order in
00:13:44.800 council came in 2020? We were at $20,000 orders to $1,000,000 orders. It scaled dramatically.
00:13:54.320 So why were you only focusing on this one? We had really done all of the due diligence we had thought
00:14:02.560 to check over with the RCMP and even with the market just to see if this was an acceptable hunting
00:14:09.200 and ranching style rifle. And once it had become that and it had been performing perfectly in that
00:14:14.960 exact marketplace, we knew that we had a winner. And it didn't just, if I understand correctly,
00:14:20.000 happen to be non-restricted. When you were designing it, it sounds like you specifically
00:14:24.320 went through painstaking efforts to ensure that it would be a non-restricted rifle.
00:14:27.920 Absolutely. We did six months for the approval after doing all the work.
00:14:31.600 And it was the RCMP that approved it, right?
00:14:33.200 Yes. And they approve it as non-restricted.
00:14:35.680 It had a full inspection report by the entire team. And from our knowledge from talking with them,
00:14:41.040 we were one of the first to actually submit a completely production rifle in its shape that
00:14:46.000 it would be sold. Despite the singers going through painstaking lengths to do their due diligence and
00:14:51.600 approach their compliance with the law in good faith, they were not given the same courtesy by
00:14:57.120 the government. I was shocked to learn that to this day, the government has still not informed
00:15:02.080 the singers that it has outlawed the only firearm they made.
00:15:06.400 We, I don't believe I have actually received anything saying that that one in particular is
00:15:11.520 prohibited. We got a letter saying that variants of AR-15s are, but on our FRT it said that ours
00:15:18.880 wasn't a variant. A year in, no one has told you, except for your customers, that you're making,
00:15:25.360 or we're making, a prohibited firearm. Exactly. And this is what we found extremely frustrating,
00:15:31.200 because we specifically, before the onset of even manufacturing, had sent an email to that
00:15:36.480 department saying that we want to work with you guys and make something that's non-restricted.
00:15:41.680 We intend to use it for hunting and sporting, no law enforcement, no military. We identified a
00:15:47.920 lucrative market that was safe and legal that we thought would enrich the Canadian communities,
00:15:52.800 via by helping them eat or by protecting their families, and just kind of went with it. Then when
00:15:58.880 everything got pulled out from underneath us, yes we could and we have had to learn other things,
00:16:04.320 but it was definitely not the sole intention was to pivot to another new market to go and reinvest and
00:16:09.840 deal with all of those pitfalls. How much lost revenue was this prohibition worth? I'd have to
00:16:16.480 calculate it, but I would say somewhere between half a million and a million right away. We were on
00:16:21.680 track to be doing some wild things. You would think this ordeal would have turned the singers off of
00:16:26.560 wanting to work in the firearms industry at all in Canada, but it hasn't had that effect. To try to
00:16:32.480 salvage what they can of their investment into their manufacturing business, the singers have
00:16:36.880 pivoted to a new type of firearm that they are fairly confident, they hope, will remain non-restricted.
00:16:43.440 But there's also another reason they aren't planning on backing down.
00:16:46.560 We need to feed our son and teach him not to give up. We're going to always find a way to make
00:16:52.000 something work. So we love making guns. You were never prepared to accept that the government won
00:16:57.920 and you are not going to concede defeat. We will not be defeated. There's definitely moments when
00:17:03.040 you question what you're doing and why you're going down the road. But at the end of the day,
00:17:07.200 the right thing is to stand up for this. But there's another dimension of firearms owners
00:17:11.840 that have had the rug pulled out completely from under them. And that is Canada's sport shooters and
00:17:17.280 competition shooters. We'll explore their stories next time. This is Assaulted, Justin Trudeau's War on Gun Owners.
00:17:47.280 Affordination of the
00:17:59.200 Aviation of the
00:18:09.920 Wolverine of the
00:18:12.840 Lake
00:18:16.200 Mustafa
00:18:16.400 We'll be right back.
00:18:46.400 We'll be right back.