Opinion: A known gap in Canada’s gun laws is costing lives

The killings in Côte-des-Neiges on June 22 were not only a tragedy. They were also a warning.

Montreal police Const. Mohamed Lamine Benredouane is dead. Another officer was injured. A civilian, Michel Moshe Mizrahi, also lost his life. Many witnesses were traumatized. As investigators work to piece together what happened, one fact is already known through early reporting: the shooter was licensed to own guns, and the weapon used is a legal firearm.

That should focus attention on a persistent gap in Canada’s gun control laws.

The rifle involved — an SKS, by all indications — is a semi-automatic firearm originally designed for military use. Despite federal efforts to prohibit a wide range of assault-style weapons, the SKS remains non-restricted and widely available to licensed gun owners.

Successive governments have acknowledged the risks associated with military-style firearms in civilian circulation, particularly after mass shootings in Nova Scotia, Quebec City, and elsewhere. Those acknowledgements led to policy changes, including the prohibition of roughly 1,500 firearm models in 2020, with additional measures in 2024 and 2025.

Yet the SKS has consistently been left out. That omission persists despite mounting evidence. The rifle has been used in multiple high-profile incidents involving civilians and police, including the 2018 Fredericton shooting that killed two police officers and two civilians. A federal expert advisory panel has also concluded that modern SKS variants share key characteristics with firearms that are already prohibited.

Illegal trafficking remains a serious concern. But focusing exclusively on smuggling risks overlooking another part of the problem: firearms that are legally obtained within Canada.

This is not an unknown problem. It is a known public safety risk in cities, towns and rural areas across Canada that has gone unaddressed. In fact, the SKS was the most common model seized by the Edmonton Police Service over a two-year period.

Recent RCMP data suggest a significant share of crime guns are domestically sourced. Long guns, including rifles, continue to be used in serious incidents, particularly those involving multiple victims or attacks on police.

Since the federal government’s first promise in 2015 to remove assault weapons from Canadian streets, timelines have repeatedly slipped. Recent steps — including the launch of broad consultations on the entire gun control regime announced last Dec. 4 (before dealing with the SKS), as well as the fourth extension of the amnesty, beyond 2026, for existing prohibited weapons announced on June 9 — consist of further delays rather than resolution.

Other countries have moved more decisively. New Zealand removed all assault weapons from circulation within six months of the Christchurch attacks. Australia completed its buyback within a year of the Port Arthur mass shooting, removing most semi-automatics from circulation.

As an added insult to Canadian taxpayers, owners who surrender their prohibited firearm for compensation under the current buyback program can use that money to purchase a new assault weapon, the SKS, thereby injecting public money directly into the coffers of assault weapon manufacturers.

All this inconsistency undermines public confidence. Canada’s incremental approach becomes harder to justify when known risks remain in communities across Canada. Indeed, the Côte-des-Neiges shooting underscores that these policy choices can have deadly real-world consequences.

At a minimum, the federal government should halt new SKS sales while it completes its review of firearm classifications. This would not solve every aspect of gun violence, but it would address a specific and well-documented vulnerability.

No single measure will eliminate gun violence. But policy coherence matters. A ban on assault-style weapons needs to be comprehensive to be credible. When exceptions persist despite clear evidence of risk, they invite the kind of scrutiny now emerging in the wake of this latest tragedy.

For a government committed to strengthening gun control, the SKS loophole is becoming increasingly difficult to explain — and harder to defend.

Heidi Rathjen is co-ordinator of PolySeSouvient and witness to the 1989 mass shooting at Polytechnique.