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00:00:33.420Let's discuss the top stories of the day and the True North exclusives you won't hear anywhere else.
00:00:41.620Originally budgeted at $200 million, the Liberal government's 2020 long gun ban is now estimated to cost taxpayers almost $1 billion.
00:00:51.300Using the Treasury Board's 2025-2026 main estimates and analysis compiled by the Canadian firearm magazine, Caliber estimates the updated budget now sits at $803.4 million.
00:01:07.780That would work out to costing taxpayers roughly $20,000 per firearm collected.
00:01:12.620The government's latest predictions for departmental spending included an expected transfer of $342.6 million in grants and contributions to the Assault Style Firearms Compensation Program.
00:01:25.920This $597.9 million lump sum was earmarked in the last fall economic statement for the Liberals' first three-year commitment to the buyback program.
00:01:38.100Operational costs incurred by public safety for program implementation were not included in the estimate.
00:01:43.900While the main estimates don't provide an exact estimate of these costs, the Public Safety Department's latest quarterly financial statement indicates that the buyback program bore the lion's share of the department's operating expenses year over year.
00:02:00.000This latest estimate remains conservative given that $30.8 million in new funding for public safety's operation and administrative costs is exclusively for serving the retail business aspect of the buyback program.
00:02:14.560According to Public Safety, that specific section of confiscation only accounts for roughly 9,000 of the 140,000 firearms that were prohibited when the legislation was initially implemented in 2020.
00:02:27.720That would amount to $3,422 in operation expenses per firearm confiscated from a business.
00:02:35.260However, many more models have been included in the years since 2020.
00:02:39.280In the final days of the Trudeau government, former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau added nearly 200 additional firearm models to its mandatory buyback program.
00:02:47.800Prime Minister Mark Carney also pledged to, quote, reinvigorate the program's implementation during his election campaign.
00:02:54.780Newly appointed Public Safety Minister Gary Anand Sandury said that 1,000 guns had been collected since the program's inception while answering questions from Conservative MP Andrew Lawton in the House of Commons on Thursday.
00:03:08.260While Anand Sandury was unable to confirm the cost of each firearm collected, he did say the government now intends to collect a total of 179,000 firearms under the buyback program.
00:03:19.680We're already five years into this thing since it was first conceived, and we only have 1,000 guns collected or purchased by the liberal government.
00:03:30.140And yet, they aim to somehow buy 179,000, and who knows along what amount of time.
00:03:37.740Is the federal program, the buyback program, even worth all of this?
00:03:42.700All the delays, the confusion, and cost overruns that have gone into this $1 billion boondoggle, Noah?
00:03:51.340I don't think so, and I think most Canadians would agree with me.
00:03:54.320I think that when the federal government proposes a program to the Canadian people, they should be able to transparently estimate how much this program would cost to administer and be able to effectively deliver on that promise.
00:04:08.640However, that is the complete opposite that we're getting from the liberal government of Trudeau and Carney.
00:04:13.980We're seeing just a complete inability to actually collect these firearms and trying to put it on, say, the Canada Post to be responsible for collecting these firearms,
00:04:25.660even though I think many Canadians would transparently be able to see the problem with that.
00:04:31.800But if the federal program is going to cost this much, it's going to cost $1 billion, I think firearms owners deserve to have some more transparency on if their firearms are going to be collected or not.
00:04:43.140I know that a lot of firearms businesses, businesses that sell guns, they are having a lot of problems with a big inventory of guns they just cannot sell.
00:04:53.640So just giving those businesses some clarity over the confusion that the federal government has been pushing onto them and really just trying to ensure that the program is able to be delivered effectively, I think that they've completely failed.
00:05:10.300So I think it's high time to just scrap the program.
00:05:13.600Many Canadians don't even agree with the goal of the program, myself included.
00:05:17.860Firearms owners and their property rights have been infringed on, and in doing so, they've created this program that they're just unable to administer in a cost-effective manner.
00:05:30.700So I think it's time, and I think Canadians would agree to me, to scrap the federal gun buyback program.
00:05:35.860But if not, just to really ensure that firearms owners are not left in this state of limbo and to actually get the program done in a cost-effective manner.
00:05:47.860Canada is driving itself into an unsustainable cycle of mass immigration, housing unaffordability, and per capita economic decline, a situation normally seen in poor countries, warns Madeleine Weld, president of Population Institute Canada.
00:06:02.740Weld's comments come in response to the OECD's 2025 Economic Survey of Canada, which found that the country is in a years-long per capita recession, despite headline GDP growth fueled by record immigration.
00:06:14.680Quote, Canada grew itself into a population trap where population growth exceeds economic growth, a situation normally associated with poor developing countries, Weld said.
00:06:24.440In 2023, its growth rate at 3.2% exceeded that of Africa and was five times higher than the OECD average.
00:06:32.500She cited warnings from the National Bank of Canada and BMO Capital Markets, both of which have called Ottawa's immigration plan unsustainable.
00:06:38.680Weld suggested negligence on the part of the federal government, which had been warned in 2022 that immigration levels were too high.
00:06:46.220She also criticized former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for increasing already high immigration levels in 2017, despite his finance minister warning of a job churn among young Canadians.
00:06:56.460Quote, Canadians can take a leaf from Japan's book.
00:06:59.420Japan's population and economy have been shrinking for years because it's rapidly aging and has a low immigration rate, but it is doing much better than Canada economically in terms of services like health care and in terms of social cohesion, said Weld.
00:07:13.020In 2023, Canada's birth rate was 1.2 children per woman, one of the lowest rates in the world.
00:07:19.180To maintain a population, a fertility rate of 2.1 children per woman is required.
00:07:23.920With a balanced immigration rate, where immigration equals emigration, Canada would have stabilized at around 27 million or 28 million, according to Weld.
00:07:32.900The OECD found that while Canada's total GDP continues to grow, real GDP per capita, a measure of individual prosperity, has fallen below pre-pandemic levels.
00:07:42.340From the start of 2015 to the end of 2023, real GDP per capita rose by just $298, or 0.5%.
00:07:50.720Weld argued that current immigration levels are driving Canada's housing crisis and eroding social cohesion.
00:07:56.140She also warned that young Canadians are being squeezed out of the labour market.
00:07:59.260Jobs normally taken by young people and those entering the job market are being taken by newcomers, many of whom are temporary residents.
00:08:06.100So, Cosmin, the federal government has been given repeated warning, not just from immigration experts, not just from economists, not just from people in highfalutin positions in civil society, but also Canadians in general.
00:08:17.660We see polls in which desire to see immigration are exceeding over 50%, breaking the sort of immigration consensus that we had, where Canadians prefer bringing in more immigrants.
00:08:30.860Now, the Trudeau government had flipped that dynamic on its head, and Canadians are pushing for reforms to the immigration system.
00:08:37.820So, Cosmin, will the Carney government finally make some of those much-desired reforms to Canada's immigration system?
00:08:43.860So, here's the thing. Even if you look at the intake targets that Carney has pledged, when you actually do the math, it's still a substantial amount of people.
00:08:53.200So, for permanent residents, he said he wants to cap it at about 1% of the population.
00:08:59.920Now, if you go based on the 2021 census data of 40 million people living in Canada, that's still 400,000 people a year coming to Canada on a permanent basis.
00:09:11.240And as the population grows, that cap is going to grow alongside with it.
00:09:17.000So, how is that any different than the 500,000 a year that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau pledged that caused all of these problems?
00:09:25.260And additionally, Carney has failed to address some of the major loopholes that are evident in Canada's immigration system,
00:09:34.740especially when it comes to international students, which he's promised a 5% cap on.
00:09:42.200Now, 5% of Canada's population is still 2 million international students per year.
00:09:48.120So, these numbers don't really sound all that great when you look at the actual quantity of people the Liberals are talking about.
00:09:56.660When they talk about percentages, when you're looking at single digits, it might sound good, but on paper, it's quite a lot of people.
00:10:03.780So, the loopholes, like, are evident when we see 20,000 asylum claims by international students in Canada,
00:10:11.640and there's been nothing done to address this, and whether the government even intends on sending these people back home, it's not really clear.
00:10:20.300It's still early on in the Carney liberal minority government, but so far, the Liberals have not really tackled the issue of immigration
00:10:30.340to the extent they would need to to solve all of the manifold problems that have emerged from this,
00:10:38.900including the housing issues, the healthcare issues, and the problems with temporary foreign workers
00:10:46.300and their impact on part-time and full-time work.
00:10:50.980And when we saw the recent labor market statistics that came out from Statistics Canada for May,
00:10:57.700it's obvious that the population is growing more than the amount of jobs our economy is producing currently.