On the social media site formerly known as Twitter, Gun Owners of Canada posted on the property rights deficiency in the Canadian constitution and specifically how it impacts Canadian gun owners:

🇨🇦 Without Property Rights, Canada Has No Protection Against an Ideological Government 🇨🇦

Canada’s firearm confiscation program exposes a constitutional weakness that has existed for decades but is now impossible to ignore. Unlike most Western democracies, Canada does not explicitly protect private property as a constitutional right. The consequences of that omission are no longer theoretical — they are being imposed on lawful citizens in real time.

For years, Canadians were assured that firearm ownership was secure so long as they complied with the law. Licensing, background checks, registration, storage requirements, and regular vetting were framed as the conditions under which ownership would be respected.

That assurance was never grounded in constitutional reality.

Because, in Canada, property exists not as a right, but as a revocable permission.

🇨🇦 Firearms Reveal the Constitutional Gap 🇨🇦

The federal government maintains that its confiscation program is about public safety. But the structure of the program and the results of its own pilot project reveal something else entirely: the exercise of power in the absence of constitutional constraint.

In the Cape Breton pilot program, the federal government projected the collection and destruction of 200 firearms. After planning and public expenditure, the outcome was 25 firearms surrendered by just 16 individuals.

More importantly, the government has declined to disclose the makes or models of those firearms. Without that information, Canadians cannot assess whether the program targeted anything relevant to criminal misuse.

Transparency is a constitutional principle. Withholding basic facts is not an accident. It is a shield against accountability.

Despite failing its own benchmarks, the program was not reconsidered. It was expanded, notably with Quebec agreeing to assist to the tune of $12.4 million of taxpayer money.

That response is not evidence-based governance. It is the predictable outcome of a system in which the state faces no constitutional barrier to taking property it has decided is politically undesirable.

🇨🇦 In Canada, “Lawful” Ownership Has No Legal Weight 🇨🇦

In countries with constitutional property rights, governments must clear an extremely high bar before seizing private property. There must be demonstrable necessity, due process, and just compensation. Courts are empowered to strike down overreach.

Canada provides none of these protections.

Parliament can prohibit previously lawful property by statute alone, retroactively invalidate ownership, and compel surrender, even where no criminal conduct exists. Licences confer no legal security. Compliance does not create vested rights. Good faith reliance on the law offers no protection.

This is not an accident. It is the direct result of leaving property rights outside the Constitution.

When property is not a right, it becomes an instrument of political control.

🇨🇦 Why This Extends Far Beyond Firearms 🇨🇦

Firearms are simply the clearest example because they are heavily regulated, highly visible, and politically convenient to target. But, constitutional gaps do not remain confined to a single issue.

Any property can be reframed as a social harm, an environmental risk, or a moral concern once the legal groundwork is in place.

Vehicles. Land. Energy infrastructure. Agricultural equipment.

Without constitutional limits, the scope of state power expands according to ideology, not necessity.

Property rights exist to prevent this exact outcome. They force governments to justify their actions under objective legal standards rather than political narratives. They ensure that citizens do not lose fundamental protections simply because a majority finds them unpopular.

🇨🇦 Constitutional Rights Are Meant to Restrain Government — Not Empower It 🇨🇦

Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms is often described as a living document, but its purpose is fixed: to restrain government power and protect individuals from arbitrary state action.

The absence of property rights from that framework has created a structural imbalance. Governments may regulate, prohibit, and confiscate without confronting a constitutional wall and citizens have no clear legal recourse when that power is abused.

The firearm confiscation program demonstrates the danger of that imbalance. Law-abiding citizens are being compelled to surrender lawfully acquired property, not because of evidence, not because of necessity, but because Parliament has decided it may.

That is not the rule of law. That is legislative supremacy without restraint.

🇨🇦 A Country Without Property Rights Is a Country Without Security 🇨🇦

Rights exist to protect minorities from political tides. They are designed to outlast governments, survive elections, and constrain ideology.

Canada’s failure to constitutionally protect private property means that no ownership is secure. It’s only tolerated.

If Canadians want protection from future governments that may be more extreme, more punitive, or more ideologically driven, property rights must be explicitly recognized and enforced.

Not as a policy preference. Not as a statutory convenience.

But as a constitutional right.

Because when the state can lawfully take what you own without justification or consequence, citizenship itself becomes conditional.

No free society can survive under those terms.

At Without Diminishment, Joshua Hart discusses the role civilian firearm ownership has played in modern times, despite the federal Liberals’ open contempt for responsible gun owners (and their matching soft-on-crime preferences for criminal gun-use):

Image from Without Diminishment

As of December 2023, more than 2.35 million Canadians held a firearms licence (PAL), a number that has almost certainly grown since then. This represents roughly 5.9 per cent of the population, yet this group has been thoroughly demonised by our Liberal government.

In a country built on restraint and self-reliance, that smear corrodes civic trust. It has not always been this way, but things will get worse before they get better for lawful Canadian gun owners unless the public narrative is confronted head-on.

First, it is important to note that Canada has a deep tradition of firearms ownership that successive governments have worked hard to downplay or erase. Contrary to the popular myth, especially in a country that prides itself on “peace, order, and good government”, that only Mounties carried guns on the frontier, the reality was the opposite.

In our historically lawful society, ordinary Canadians were trusted to possess and carry firearms for protection, hunting, sport, and other legitimate needs in a vast and often harsh land.

In the 158 years since Confederation, Canada has transformed from a sparsely populated, pioneering dominion into one of the world’s most urbanised nations.

Most people in this country today find guns a strange and exotic topic, primarily associated with war films and history books. That does not mean urban Canadians are excluded from our heritage of firearms ownership. On the contrary, many Canadian cities boast thriving indoor shooting ranges with strong memberships, and despite, or perhaps because of, recent government overreach, enrolment in firearms licensing courses has risen sharply since the pandemic.

Clearly, more Canadians than ever are interested in joining the long tradition of responsible firearms ownership. With this growing interest in firearms, why is the government more apprehensive than ever?

My answer is the political economy of gun control in Canada. What we have witnessed over the past decade is a straightforward political calculation by the Liberals.

If the average suburban voter, after watching their nightly dose of American crime news, believes that most guns are inherently evil, dangerous, and unfit for civilian hands, then any non-Conservative political party has a powerful incentive to pursue gun-control measures, regardless of whether those measures actually help police or reduce firearm-related crime.

On the whole, Prime Minister Carney would gain no political advantage by dropping the gun-control agenda. Progressive voters are hungry for gun control, and neglecting the issue may cost Carney a significant number of seats in battleground ridings. In other words, compliant Canadians are being scapegoated in the headlines while violent offenders are ignored.