Communication with our members is always open and encouraged and we are always here to offer our support to you and your business.

CSAAA’s Day-to-Day Work

• Assisting individual businesses when operational issues and questions with licensing, transferring, shipping, import/export, business web services and navigating new regulations.

• Helping new firearms businesses get started and existing firearms businesses expand through information and guidance.

• Constantly monitoring government activities for warning signs, new potential regulations, regulatory changes and any other activities that will impact firearms and hunting businesses in any way and reacting and acting accordingly by initiating meetings with the appropriate politicians and policy makers to advocate for fair policy and fight regulations that will be harmful to business operations and the industry and community.

• Host Roundtable Meetings on a quarterly basis throughout the year to keep businesses informed and united while giving business representatives an opportunity to voice questions and concerns.

• Weekly email communications to keep businesses informed on news, regulations and information that help them conduct business.

• Remaining truly non-partisan so we can work with any government that is in power. This has proven to help us have a voice and seat at the table during the past 10 years of a government that has not been friendly to the firearms community and industry.

• Keeping the general public and firearms community/end users informed on the impact that current government regulations have and any struggles the industry faces on businesses and the industry as a whole through news interviews, media releases, social media communications and through working with the consumer firearms, hunting and wildlife groups.

• Meeting constantly with politicians, policy makers and industry service agents such as CFOs, CFP, RCMP and couriers to voice concerns of the industry and advocate for a better environment for firearms businesses and the firearms community.

• Maintaining a healthy, open and professional relationship with all firearms, wildlife, hunting, conservation and sports shooting organizations as we feel a united voice is the best and strongest.

• Working closely with the Canadian Federation of Independent Businesses to secure benefits and specific advocacy for our members.

• Offering constant support by phone and email for businesses that come across any industry, operational and regulatory questions or concerns.

• Maintain constant communication and constructive working relationships with CFOs, RCMP, CFP, Public Safety and bureaucrats.

CSAAA Accomplishments – over the past year

• Confiscation/Compensation Program

– Working weekly with public safety to try to secure the best possible compensation and process for businesses in the confiscation program (known by the Federal Government as the Assault Style Firearms Buyback Program) so that businesses that require this compensation to keep their businesses open and people employed can get the funds they need.

– Without CSAAA’s intervention and work, businesses would have been subjected to an extremely unfair and confusing compensation model for the firearms that are unsellable in their inventory (see below).

– Secured compensation for unsellable parts and accessories.

– Secured a $250 administration/processing fee per firearm that will be compensated to businesses on top of the compensation values for the individual makes and models being claimed to make up for the work that employees must go through to catalogue, process and package each firearm being claimed.

– Communicating between businesses and the “buyback”/confiscation program representatives to help with any issues they run into.

– Consistently advocated against these prohibitions altogether highlighting with evidence how wasteful and ineffective the entire program and how harmful this is to the businesses and community in an attempt to get these prohibitions reversed.

• Prohibitions

– Consulted with the Public Safety Minister directly while the team was forming the prohibition lists for the December 2024 and March 2025 prohibitions to advocate against these prohibitions arguing the ineffectiveness and the devastating impact to the industry and community including sports shooters and farmers, hunters and sustenance and indigenous communities.

– Drastically reduced the number of firearms makes and models on the prohibition lists for December and March by arguing how much they would inflate the costs and workload of the program for Public Safety, impact businesses and communities. For example, the March 2025 prohibition was initially going to reflect the Amendment G46 that was removed from Bill C-21 that included nearly 500 makes and models. This was reduced to 179 makes and models through constant consolation with the Public Safety Minister and team tasked with forming the list.

• Shipping and Courier Issues

– Working with Canada Post, Transport Canada, Minister of Transportation and politicians in the Outdoors Caucus to secure Canada wide delivery of ammunition – as individuals and businesses in remote communities currently have extreme difficulties accessing shipments and businesses have limited shipping options.

– Meeting with various couriers to secure more options for firearms and ammunition shipping.

• Witness at Senate and House of Commons

– CSAAA will consistently appear as a witness in House of Commons and Senate when firearms related policy is being passed.

– Appeared as a witness in the House of Commons and Senate to speak on behalf of the industry when Bill C-21 (handgun transfer ban/semi-auto restrictions) and Bill C-75 (record keeping policy for firearms retailers) was going through.

– Sent multiple emails and letters to all members of Senate, MPs in the House of Commons from all political parties (especially the Liberal party) and Public Safety to speak out against Bill C-21 and offered resources to all businesses to do the same.

– Met with key MPs and Senate to advocated to have the Bill scrapped altogether, but as that was clearly not an option, CSAAA was able to get some of the provisions changed to reduce industry and community impacts.

– Successfully advocated to get the list G46 removed from Bill C-21 (the large prohibition list)

• Firearms Marking Regulations

– Successfully advocated against the proposed firearms marking policies that would seriously burden manufactures and importers. Through consultations and warnings from CSAAA, policymakers have been forced to delay the implementation of this policy multiple times. Most recently the policy was supposed to come into force December 2024 – but this has been delayed again.

• Established Legends Program

– Established the Industry Legends Program to help honour members of the industry that have made great contributions to help unite the industry and increase moral.

• Secured Advanced Business Web Services

– Business Web Services outages have been a major issue for retailers trying to transfer firearms and obtain reference numbers after hours/on weekends when stores are most busy. Through consultation with CFP, CSAAA has been able to secure an after-hours call system for when outages occur so that retailers can still conduct business.

– CSAAA has advocated for a more user-friendly system through BWS and continues to advocate for changes that will make businesses lives easier when they have to deal with BWS.

• Industry Specific Events

– Hosts industry specific events like trade shows and range days

• Barrel/Slides/Magazine Regulations & Definitions

– Currently working with policy makers and Public Safety to minimize impact of magazine regulations that we will see in the near future as a result of Bill C-21.

– Worked with our legal team to create true, comprehensive definitions for barrels and slides that now require a PAL verification before selling/transferring to alleviate confusions for businesses.

• Explosives and NRCAN

– Working with NRCAN to advocate for more workable explosives storage regulations that are being revised. Through consultation, some extreme storage and transportation regulations that would burden businesses have been stopped.

– Officially became an advisor on behalf of businesses for NRCAN. NRCAN now consults with CSAAA before making any changes to regulations that will impact ammunition.

• Gunsmithing Program

– Working to establish an official gunsmithing trade certification program in Canada with a recognized College.

– Established a gunmithing committee with industry experts to help form a proper program to present to colleges.

– Meeting this month with a college willing to consider this program.