Juno News - Liberals' firearm ban leaves Canadian gun retailers in limbo

00:00:00.000 this is an issue that has saddled gun stores with in some cases hundreds of thousands of dollars

00:00:14.140 of inventory that they cannot move and even outside of those specific prohibitions it is

00:00:20.140 an uncertainty that has now affected this where why would you run a business when the government

00:00:25.220 could ban the things that you are trying to sell i wanted to talk about this issue a little bit more

00:00:31.020 from the perspective of the industry itself which by the way is not dominated by these big

00:00:36.780 multinational billion dollar corporations it's often small mom and pop shops across this country

00:00:42.320 wes winkle is here he's the president of the canadian sporting arms and ammunition

00:00:46.840 association wes it's good to talk to you thanks for coming on today thank you very much for having me

00:00:53.060 just set the stage here first off i alluded to it there but what is the profile of a firearms

00:00:59.540 business owner in canada typically you hit the nail right on the head it's uh it's one of those things

00:01:05.640 where most of our mom and pop shops uh typically you're looking at a an employee base of five to

00:01:11.420 12 employees um in many cases a rural uh business or in a non-urban area is where most of our businesses

00:01:19.100 are located one of the things i should point out when i was filming uh that documentary in which

00:01:25.540 your your predecessor in in your position was a featured guest one of the challenges whenever we

00:01:30.640 were interviewing owners of gun stores is that every five minutes someone's walking in and they

00:01:35.620 were old friends they knew each other i mean these things have actually become somewhat of community

00:01:40.620 hubs as well your neighborhood gun store for people that are in sport shooting and in hunting and

00:01:45.260 and that's not something that a lot of businesses in this day and age get to do

00:01:48.760 no it's it's a very unique situation it's uh we always uh like that old hot stove league mentality

00:01:55.360 where you have a a lot of folks coming in on a regular basis to um to go ahead and um you know

00:02:05.080 chew the fat about their their event and their sport and they like to come in and talk about it and

00:02:08.900 it's a very small close-knit community for sure uh it crosses a lot of different uh realms of

00:02:14.900 employment you know there's there's people that are farmers and and rule uh shooters and hunters

00:02:19.920 but then you have lots of uh urban uh gentlemen that are and ladies that participate in law 0.91

00:02:24.860 enforcement and the military that like to practice their their their craft outside of their work so

00:02:29.100 there's a lot of different uh aspects at play so i know that the the handgun ban uh when i believe

00:02:37.400 we we lost you uh so we'll have to to get west back there i'm speaking to half of my there we go

00:02:42.100 i was speaking to half of my logo there i know that the handgun ban was actually quite a boon for 0.76

00:02:47.620 gun stores i know gun stores all of a sudden couldn't like sell handguns quickly enough

00:02:51.800 because there was a bit of a phase-in period but but for the order and council this uh effectively

00:02:57.140 locked up huge amounts of inventory that i mean certainly in the cases of businesses i've spoken to

00:03:03.380 they've not been able to do anything with for uh effectively three years now like what are the

00:03:10.040 effects of that if you're a gun retailer uh they're immense uh just like you had mentioned in your

00:03:15.780 previous segment about stale inventory and stale inventory is the death of retail as a whole but on

00:03:21.180 top of that you have costs associated with it not just warehousing costs and holding costs but

00:03:26.000 insurance costs uh you know for a lot of us that are holding hundreds of thousands of dollars in

00:03:30.240 inventory it costs you ten thousands of dollars a year to ensure that inventory especially when the

00:03:34.680 government puts a prohibited tag name on it so uh it's a very expensive thing to keep in our inventory

00:03:40.080 and and we've had no ability to have a lawfully uh or a legal aspect to dispose of this inventory

00:03:46.920 and it's got a great deal of expense as well as taking up very valuable warehouse and retail space

00:03:52.220 has there been in the members that you've spoken to a sense that it's just not worth it anymore like

00:03:59.300 why would i spend so much of my time effort and money in this industry that the government could

00:04:04.480 basically outlaw overnight absolutely there's been a fatigue we've seen a lot of businesses in the last

00:04:10.840 six months across our great country close and it's it's a combination of financial viability but just

00:04:16.720 overall fatigue of over regulation it's not just on the firearm side but on the ammunition side

00:04:22.600 the regulations when it comes to importing and exporting i mean we're just so heavily regulated that it

00:04:27.840 yeah there's a level of fatigue and and you're in a situation where uh you know it's it's a lot of

00:04:34.800 these owners are a little older and therefore it's uh you know it's a little bit harder for them to

00:04:38.980 maintain uh keeping up with all these online regulations and constantly being on the internet

00:04:43.680 and logging into the rcmp website and giving permission to sell stuff it just gets difficult and

00:04:48.560 they just get worn down and and retire from our industry in terms of representing the industry side

00:04:55.900 your group is pretty much unparalleled i would go so far as to say so has there been at the very least

00:05:02.700 consultation or adequate consultation from the government on what a resolution would look like

00:05:09.500 yes we've had some consultation uh we didn't have any consultation before the oic but then ideally when

00:05:15.100 you consult before you do something absolutely and and to be honest uh the oic is so poorly written

00:05:21.340 which is why we've had this long delay and why there's so much uh you know it's so difficult to

00:05:26.060 bring this program forward because we're really at a spot yet where we still haven't quite determined

00:05:31.340 what actually was prohibited you know you mentioned at the start of your segment at 1500 makes and models

00:05:36.380 and that was what was originally listed by the government but then they've added on 300 354 makes

00:05:41.900 and models that they found out were caught under the same net as the original prohibition so we're still

00:05:47.580 trying to determine what exactly was prohibited because it was so poorly written by the uh minister

00:05:51.900 blair in his office at the time and again if there had been consultation back before this there may

00:05:56.700 not been quite such a mess but now of course uh we're we're uh stuck trying to figure out how to deal

00:06:02.540 with this regulation and uh we're currently going through that now there is some consultation but uh

00:06:08.780 you know the slow turning wheels of the government are very difficult to fight through especially when

00:06:14.060 you have such a convoluted program one thing a lot of people don't understand about these firearms is

00:06:18.460 they're so modular in nature and there's so many different moving pieces and they're kind of like a

00:06:23.740 mr potato head of guns type of thing where you're putting different snapping different pieces on and

00:06:28.140 some of those pieces are prohibited some of them are not but some of them can be used in other farms

00:06:31.580 some of them can't and therefore they're trying to figure out how to how to properly gather all the

00:06:36.940 information that is required there yeah and i was actually going to ask about that because you know

00:06:43.500 there certainly is a huge huge market for accessories for firearms and i've not been told

00:06:49.740 and you may have a different uh perspective this but i've not been told that a gun buyback

00:06:53.900 would extend to accessories so there may be a no real way to recoup that money well so again we only

00:07:01.420 get to deal with the business aspect we have no interest or no communication on the uh on the individual

00:07:06.780 buyback i mean from a business perspective if you have a bunch of accessories in your warehouse which

00:07:12.300 maybe you can return to the distributor but maybe you can't i mean there may be no compensation for

00:07:16.780 that and no retail market for it now yeah no there and there has been extensive consultation on the

00:07:22.460 on the um on all the parts and the different components of the firearms uh there has been an

00:07:27.820 extensive discussion going on about that uh obviously um uh from our dealer's perspective uh because

00:07:34.060 so many of these things are modular nature we wouldn't be a part of anything if the parts and

00:07:38.540 accessories were not included so uh we've been a large discussion on how those parts will be

00:07:43.340 compensated for especially from those of uh our members that are manufacturers you know they don't

00:07:48.540 want to have to take the time to assemble these firearms to be turned in it makes no sense whatsoever

00:07:53.900 to put that extra expense on there so uh you know they have bins and bins of parts of these

00:07:58.540 manufacturers and they need to be compensated for as well just in closing here i'll ask you wes about

00:08:05.100 what the dollar value would be not not an individual dollar value but in general the approach to a

00:08:10.540 dollar value would be that would take the sting out a little bit because if the government were to

00:08:14.860 say we'll reimburse you for the cost you purchase this at to businesses that doesn't really take into

00:08:20.700 account the warehousing the opportunity cost you know if they had to you know take out debt for

00:08:25.900 example to buy the inventory in the first place but i also don't think government really wants to be

00:08:30.780 enriching or in its view enriching business owners by paying a premium like what would the reasonable

00:08:37.020 middle ground be well there's probably uh you know what is the current retail value of that item is

00:08:43.660 probably where the current middle ground is you know it absolutely does not compensate us for our

00:08:47.980 losses you know whenever you have inventory tied up for three years there should be six to 12 turns on

00:08:53.180 that on that inventory and we're not going to get compensated for that and we're well aware of that

00:08:57.740 but uh at the same time uh storage and and insurance costs aren't being compensated either so our losses

00:09:03.900 are still going to be immense but uh you know the middle ground that uh i am assuming we're going to

00:09:08.540 hopefully end up at is is the retail value for the items um and uh you know that's um remains to be seen

00:09:15.500 if that's where they go but it still won't take the sting out of it and uh especially the the biggest

00:09:21.340 cost that our businesses have is the is the training of staff uh but yes we have uh so much invested in

00:09:28.380 the marketing and and the training of our staff and the sting of that will never go away uh it's

00:09:33.020 it's something that uh you know business has had tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of

00:09:37.660 dollars invested in and that's all out the window and it's an absolute collapse of that part of the

00:09:41.980 industry wes winkle is the president of the canadian sporting arms and ammunition association i thank you

00:09:48.380 for uh making your way through the tech issues there right uh you you solved the better than

00:09:52.460 anyone else uh we have on the show is usually able to so thanks very much wes good to talk to you

00:09:56.860 thanks for listening to the andrew lawton show support the program by donating to true north at www.tnc.news

Juno News - October 02, 2023

Liberals' firearm ban leaves Canadian gun retailers in limbo

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