In the fall, the federal government launched a six-week pilot program to collect firearms it classified as 'prohibited' from licence-holders in Cape Breton, N.S.JONATHAN HAYWARD/The Canadian Press
When an individual falls victim to the sunk cost fallacy, the consequences that follow are generally even worse. Maybe it’s an extra few thousand wasted on a rust bucket of a car just to feel like the money invested in it wasn’t for nothing. Maybe it means staying in a bad relationship that ought to have ended years ago. Maybe it’s why – just to pick a totally random example – a columnist will persist with a snoozer of a column because she’s typed out 500 words already. These are emotional, illogical decisions, but humans are emotional, illogical creatures who often have a hard time reversing course when we feel like we’ve already invested a lot of money, time or attention.
When governments fall victim to the sunk cost fallacy, however, the toll is much higher than a broken-down Nissan blocking traffic. In the infamous case of the Concorde jet debacle, the British and French governments continued pouring hundreds of millions – and eventually billions – over the course of decades into developing the airliner, even after it became clear the project was not economically viable. In the end, the Concorde flew commercially for less than 30 years.
Canada is apparently ready to launch its very own Concorde, having spent nearly six years and close to $100-million ($22-million in compensation for businesses, and at least $67-million in administrative costs) on a national program that hasn’t actually begun yet. Canada’s plan makes even less sense than the Concorde, however, which despite its delays, cost overruns, and technical limitations, at least achieved its goal of getting planes in the air. But Canada’s “Assault-Style Firearms Compensation Program” cannot possibly achieve its assigned goal of making our streets safer, simply because it does not actually target the guns making our streets unsafe.
Gun buyback pilot to launch in Cape Breton, with plans to expand nationwide
It’s trite at this point to note that the vast majority of firearms-involved crimes in Canada are committed using illegally obtained guns. Yet this project could spend more than $750-million (which is itself an outdated Parliamentary Budget Officer estimate from 2021) to collect firearms from valid licence-holders, who are not, by and large, the ones committing the crimes. And the program may not be successful in even achieving that.
Back in the fall, the government launched a six-week pilot program to collect the firearms it has classified since 2020 as “prohibited” from licence-holders in Cape Breton, N.S. At the outset, Department of Public Safety officials said they were “confident” that they would collect 200 guns. But when the pilot wrapped up, the department had collected just 25, paying out $26,535 to 16 people, according to reporting by the Toronto Sun.
We can infer based on the government’s initial estimate, then, that roughly 175 prohibited weapons still remain in Cape Breton, which will either need to be handed over or permanently disabled by the time the amnesty period ends on Oct. 30, 2026. The government has not said how it will verify that prohibited weapons that remain in the community will be disabled by that date, an endeavour that will likely be far more complicated than anticipated if buyback numbers nationally are as lacklustre as they were in Cape Breton.
Public Safety Minister Gary Anandasangaree nevertheless defended the program on Monday, saying, “As an overall pilot, I believe it was successful,” which is sort of like watching your car drag its muffler across the asphalt and saying it just needs a spot of paint. “When we roll out the program in its full form in the upcoming weeks, we do anticipate much greater uptake,” he said.
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It is unclear on what grounds Mr. Anandasangaree believes a national program will be more successful, especially when it doesn’t even have sign-on from all the provinces (and, in the case of Alberta, when the Premier has taken steps to resist it.) But again, even if the buyback achieves its target number of confiscated weapons (which the government has also not disclosed), it is likely to have little to no effect on crime rates.
Indeed, the Liberals are trudging ahead with a program that has wasted, and will continue to waste, hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars confiscating the weapons that aren’t used in crimes, and following a failed pilot project because … it’s politically popular in Quebec? Because we’ve already invested $100-million, and it would look bad to walk away now? Because he’s agreed to go to therapy and promises that this time, he’ll really change?
To the extent there was ever logic to this gun buyback project in the first place, there is zero reason to continue with this wasteful charade now. But then, we humans are emotional and illogical – and apparently, so too is this government.