Episode 2： Gun Business Under Fire ｜ Assaulted
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Summary
In the wake of the Order and Council and Bill C-21, Canadian firearms business owners have been left sitting on hundreds of thousands of dollars in inventory that the Liberal government made illegal overnight with no recourse for businesses that invested millions of dollars into buying it.
Transcript
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When we think of firearms ownership it's easy to think of that end user that takes the gun to the
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range and fires a few rounds at a target. But to get a gun in the hands of a law-abiding firearms
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owner often follows a complex and lengthy chain involving manufacturing, distribution, shipping,
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and retailing. All of these are businesses that form the Canadian firearms industry. An industry
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responsible for 8.5 billion dollars into the Canadian economy each year and the creation of 50,000
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jobs. These are people that work in retail outlets, people that work at Canada's many ranges and gun
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clubs and those involved in the import and distribution and in some cases manufacturing
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of firearms domestically. Despite being such a robust industry the firearms sector has been absent from
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the government's discussions and consultations about the Order and Council and Bill C-21. In many cases
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firearms business owners have been left sitting on hundreds of thousands of dollars in inventory
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that the Liberal government made illegal overnight with no recourse for businesses that invested
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millions of dollars into buying it. One of those businesses is Accuracy Plus just outside of
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Peterborough, Ontario. Jeff Toomes is the manager. A lot of these firearms that became prohibited were
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extremely popular models. So overnight we had tens of thousands of dollars of inventory that now that
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we can do nothing with and I guess I got wrapped up in a little bit because to add insult to injury here
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like when the Order of Council came in May the 1st I read the directive in the abstract and I'm paraphrasing
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here but in there it said you know the government realizes that you know business owners sales may be
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affected because certain firearms have become prohibited and they should gear towards selling stuff that
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isn't prohibited. So to use a specific model the Dairy MK-12 good seller for us. There's a Typhoon that's very
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very similar only different and it was not in the original Order and Council so I thought oh okay here's
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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
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dealt with beforehand so had no previous history with so we had to prepay up front. So about the
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first week of May I ordered a bunch of these Typhoons and they arrived I think May the 12th and I didn't
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even get the cellophane off the skid and May the 15th they became prohibited. So in that time frame we got
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further wrapped up into it. You know you prohibited stuff and made inventory obsolete and dead for us.
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We geared towards using your Order and Council in the abstract in there and taking it in good faith.
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We buy some more stuff that we can sell and then you just make it prohibited again. Like how is it
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that you want us to do business in this you know in this environment? How do you expect us to survive?
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So how is a business like yours supposed to operate when anything that you sell could one day
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be illegal? On eggshells take it a day at a time. I visited Jeff's store one year after the Liberals
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Order and Council and there in his warehouse were tens of thousands of dollars of now prohibited firearms
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they're illegal to sell or to use and cannot even be sold back to the government despite the promise
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of a buyback. It's a rule of retail if you're not moving inventory you're losing money. Something felt
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by a lot of the gun store owners I heard from is that this is a feature not a bug of the Liberals gun
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measures. You know we're sitting on inventory right now that we can't sell and that's tying up a lot
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of dollars which in retail is is a cardinal sin the the biggest sin in retail is not to turn your
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inventory over so you know it it's created some financial hardship and but I try not to complain
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about it too much because I know I'm not alone. I know that every other business whether you're a
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wholesaler or distributor in the country has been affected. I liken it to the automotive industry and
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imagine you own a car lot and Environment Canada walks onto your lot one day and says
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we're banning V8s and by the way you can't sell them they have to sit on your lot and maybe someday
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two or three maybe four years down the road we might pay you costs we might pay you retail or we
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just might be a flat amount we're going to give you but in the meantime all the parts that you have for
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them and your vehicles are tied up so as retailers and wholesalers that's where we're at right now
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our inventory inventory is tied up that we can't sell it your entire business model has been
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destroyed and there's a lot of people out there unfortunately in this country we're in that
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situation right now because of the OIC. For Scott Carpenter it isn't just about guns like any small
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business owner Scott's store is his livelihood it's how he supports his family. The main thing in the
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meantime is to keep my business as healthy as possible it's a it's a family business so it pays my
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mortgage and pays my my medical insurance and keeps my daughter healthy so I have a young girl
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who has what we call a rare disease and one of the things the business has always done is backstopped
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her health because there's been times when we've had issues with insurance or government health care
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and the business has had to backstop her medication so you know my main concern and focus technically is
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really my family so I'll do whatever I need to do with the business to keep it moving forward and make
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sure that everyone in my house is taken care of. While not being allowed to sell certain products
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has no doubt irked gun retailers the biggest issue is the lack of engagement in developing these measures
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and the lack of support or even notification when they're put in place. Alison DeGroote is the
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managing director of the Canadian Shooting Arms and Ammunition Association a group that seeks to give
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the firearms industry a voice. Under the current government she's had her work cut out for her.
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It's extremely difficult our businesses are adapting as best they could so these are businesses
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that went into a pandemic environment that then had a huge swath of their inventory affected by a piece
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of legislation and no response from government on how to comply on what they could bring in to replace
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the lost income. We have another piece of legislation just introduced that wipes out or could potentially
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wipe out another category of their income it has just been and the lack of communication and the
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lack of technical expertise even in implementing these it's one thing to have a political agenda it's
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another thing how that trickles down into the real life livelihood of somebody operating a business and
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trying to comply with the legislation. The attacks on gun business owners are particularly puzzling when
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you look at how much of a positive impact the firearms industry has on the Canadian economy and local
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economies. Sports shooting and hunting are responsible for billions of dollars into the
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Canadian economy each year not to mention tens of thousands of jobs. Some of those jobs are in
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Lakefield Ontario at one of two Savage Arms production facilities in the world. Savage Arms' Canadian
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plant is now in its 51st year manufacturing 1300 to 1400 rifles daily which are sold in Canada and around
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the world on the civilian market. We do everything we drill the barrel we machine the parts it's advanced
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manufacturing we're really providing all kinds of level of skill sets from just general machine operators
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right up to design engineers and programmers and metrology engineers so all the tools of advanced
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manufacturing. Prosperity at Savage Canada creates regional prosperity in the area because you know we're
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buying our synthetic stocks from a local provider here in Peterborough called Merit Precision. We buy another
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small amount of synthetic stocks from Oneida molded plastics which are just about two hours
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again I said a hundred mile radius. We're spending millions of dollars in Belleville. We're spending
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hundreds of thousands and millions of dollars in Scarborough and Whitby, Ajax, you know.
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Well in Ottawa and in the media guns may be subjected to misunderstandings and political attacks.
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In Lakefield Savage Arms is part of the community. Many of the plant's almost 170 employees have been there for
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years. Local MPs have toured the plant they have a presence at community events but when decisions are
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being made they still feel excluded. You know we're the only industry that gets no consultation no not
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allowed on any government committees. When would you ever think of anyone on the um you know and any kind
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other industry completely ignored by the Canadian government. This lack of communication from the government is
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something that was consistently reported by pretty much every gun owner I spoke to in the course of producing
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this documentary. A lack of communication is the rule and not the exception and it isn't just a minor
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inconvenience either. It can cost from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars depending
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on the nature of the business. I spoke in Okotoks Alberta with Adam Patterson and Terry Korth of Korth Group.
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The 44 year old Korth Group is a very successful distribution company in Canada selling to large
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numbers of independent retailers and also law enforcement and government agencies. There's a good
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chance that any firearm in Canada you've legally handled pass through this facility in Okotoks.
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And even as a company that does a lot of business with various arms of the government,
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they find themselves scrambling to keep up with the latest changes. And more importantly,
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the onus is on them to make sure they aren't missing something. We were probably stuck with
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between $80,000 and $100,000 worth of inventory that we have here that is dead. It's here and it'll stay
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here until such time as we decide what to do. A lot of them, you know, we can still sell into law
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enforcement agencies. Unfortunately, a lot of that product is not geared to that market.
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So it's pretty much just dead and it'll sit here until we, you know, make a decision what to do with
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it. As a major business in the firearms sector, has the federal government reached out to you in its
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consultations on this about the on the ground implications of some of these restrictions?
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Never? You've never gotten a phone call, not even from your local MP?
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Well, and we don't want to be afraid of what ifs because we need to run our business and operate
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the way we feel is appropriate for the market. But one component of the change we've seen since last
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May is the additional firearms that have been added to that Order and Council list and backdated to May 1st,
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even though they might have been prohibited in August of last year. And there's no notice given to
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anybody involved in the process. So we could have a shipment of firearms coming to the border and all of a
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sudden the guns on that shipment are now deemed to be prohibited. And we're not notified until
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customs would reach out to say that this shipment's been seized. And that has happened to two other
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distributors that we have good relationships with at the point of entry when the product was coming
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across the border. Whether a tip-off was sent to the feds or how it happened, those guns were prohibited
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So you, as a distributor, are not notified when a product you carry is added to the prohibited list?
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The onus is on us to check the firearms reference table daily prior to every shipment that comes from all of our
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vendors. There's no set mandate from the government on how we're supposed to access the information
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Meanwhile, Andrew, the manufacturer wants to be paid for their product. So in a lot of cases,
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you pay for that product. So if it's a half a million dollar shipment, you have to pay for it.
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And you can't do anything with it. It's sitting in limbo, incurring more and more charges.
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When you think of a firearms manufacturer, you more than likely conjure up an image in your mind of a
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huge industrial factory, a Smith and Wesson, a Ruger or a Savage Arms.
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But Maccabee Defense is literally a mom and pop operation, a factory built in a farm in rural
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Alberta. The singers created Maccabee Defense with a very simple mandate to build the type of firearm
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they felt was missing from the landscape. They're lifelong gun owners. As rural Albertans, it's a part of
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their way of life. But they felt there was a need for a modular non-restricted firearm that could be
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used among many applications for hunting. It was important to them, knowing their clientele,
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that they had a non-restricted firearm because of the way those are used on farms, on ranches
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and in other forms. They invested tens of thousands of dollars of their own savings, converted their barn
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and learned how to be machinists for the sole purpose of building the SLR Multi. Business was booming
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from the moment they introduced the firearm. We were trying to target the younger crowd who
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was a lot newer to shooting, who didn't necessarily know all of the actual functions and features of a
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rifle and where they were positioned. So what we wanted to try and do was go back to the basics of
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trying to make something that was easier to learn, easier to use and a lot safer to use in that
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transitional period. So your plan was to turn this into a full-time business for both of you, right?
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Well, the plan was to turn our main source of income into something that we were passionate about.
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We just knew that doing something that we didn't like for too long was going to be a very bad thing
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for us. So when did you quit your jobs? I think it was two weeks after that official prototype.
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So what was the trajectory then from when you first sold and started producing to when the order in
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council came in 2020? We were at $20,000 orders to $1,000,000 orders. It scaled dramatically.
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So why were you only focusing on this one? We had really done all of the due diligence we had thought
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to check over with the RCMP and even with the market just to see if this was an acceptable hunting
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and ranching style rifle. And once it had become that and it had been performing perfectly in that
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exact marketplace, we knew that we had a winner. And it didn't just, if I understand correctly,
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happen to be non-restricted. When you were designing it, it sounds like you specifically
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went through painstaking efforts to ensure that it would be a non-restricted rifle.
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Absolutely. We did six months for the approval after doing all the work.
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It had a full inspection report by the entire team. And from our knowledge from talking with them,
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we were one of the first to actually submit a completely production rifle in its shape that
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it would be sold. Despite the singers going through painstaking lengths to do their due diligence and
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approach their compliance with the law in good faith, they were not given the same courtesy by
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the government. I was shocked to learn that to this day, the government has still not informed
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the singers that it has outlawed the only firearm they made.
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We, I don't believe I have actually received anything saying that that one in particular is
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prohibited. We got a letter saying that variants of AR-15s are, but on our FRT it said that ours
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wasn't a variant. A year in, no one has told you, except for your customers, that you're making,
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or we're making, a prohibited firearm. Exactly. And this is what we found extremely frustrating,
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because we specifically, before the onset of even manufacturing, had sent an email to that
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department saying that we want to work with you guys and make something that's non-restricted.
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We intend to use it for hunting and sporting, no law enforcement, no military. We identified a
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lucrative market that was safe and legal that we thought would enrich the Canadian communities,
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via by helping them eat or by protecting their families, and just kind of went with it. Then when
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everything got pulled out from underneath us, yes we could and we have had to learn other things,
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but it was definitely not the sole intention was to pivot to another new market to go and reinvest and
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deal with all of those pitfalls. How much lost revenue was this prohibition worth? I'd have to
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calculate it, but I would say somewhere between half a million and a million right away. We were on
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track to be doing some wild things. You would think this ordeal would have turned the singers off of
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wanting to work in the firearms industry at all in Canada, but it hasn't had that effect. To try to
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salvage what they can of their investment into their manufacturing business, the singers have
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pivoted to a new type of firearm that they are fairly confident, they hope, will remain non-restricted.
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But there's also another reason they aren't planning on backing down.
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We need to feed our son and teach him not to give up. We're going to always find a way to make
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something work. So we love making guns. You were never prepared to accept that the government won
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and you are not going to concede defeat. We will not be defeated. There's definitely moments when
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you question what you're doing and why you're going down the road. But at the end of the day,
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the right thing is to stand up for this. But there's another dimension of firearms owners
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that have had the rug pulled out completely from under them. And that is Canada's sport shooters and
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competition shooters. We'll explore their stories next time. This is Assaulted, Justin Trudeau's War on Gun Owners.