Tim Thurley: Canada's civilian gun culture should be part of our defence plan

An armed and trained citizenry, and a thriving weapons industry, are essential parts of any national defence strategy.

A live-fire exercise in Switzerland.

By: Tim Thurley

Canadians pretended we didn’t need to take defence seriously. We justified it with fantasies — the world wasn’t that dangerous, threats were distant, and America would rescue us if needed. That delusion is dead. U.S. Republicans and some Democrats don’t trust us to defend our own territory. Trump openly floated annexation and made clear that military protection now comes at a price — potentially statehood. Canadian military leaders now describe our closest ally as “unpredictable and potentially unreliable.” And even when America was a sure bet, our overreliance was reckless. Sovereignty requires self-defence; outsourcing it means surrendering power.

We should take cues from nations in similar situations, like Finland. Both of us border stronger powers, control vast, harsh landscapes, and hold valuable strategic resources. We’re internally stable, democratic, and potential targets.

We also share a key strength — one that could expand our military recruitment, onshore defence production, rebuild social trust, and bolster deterrence: a strong civilian firearms tradition.

We should be doing everything we can to make that tradition a bigger part of Canadian defence, and a larger part of our economy, too.

That may sound absurd to some Canadians. It shouldn’t. Finland is taking full advantage by attempting to expand shooting and military training for civilians both through private and public ranges and the voluntary National Defence Training Association. Finland is seeking to massively upgrade civilian range capacity by building 300 new ones and upgrading others to encourage civilian interest in firearms and national defence, and is doing so in partnership with civilian firearm owners and existing non-government institutions.

Multiple other states near Finland are investing in similar programs. Poland is even involving the education system. Firearm safety training and target practice for school children are part of a new defence education curriculum component, which includes conflict zone survival, cybersecurity, and first aid training. Poland’s aim is to help civilians manage conflict zones, but also to bolster military recruitment.

Lithuania and Estonia encourage civilian marksmanship as part of a society-wide comprehensive defence strategy. The Lithuanian Riflemen's Union, one of the small nation’s most recognizable institutions, is a voluntary government-sponsored organization intended to prepare civilians for resistance to an occupying power. It has 15,000 members in a population of 2.8 million. The Estonian Defence League trains mostly-unpaid civilian volunteers in guerrilla warfare. It has an 80 per cent approval rating in Estonia, where over one in every 100 men and women with ordinary jobs have joined to learn defence techniques, including mastering standard-issue military service rifles that they may keep at home, ready to fight on a moment’s notice.

These strategies are modern. These countries are no strangers to cutting-edge modern warfare, necessitated by a common border with an aggressive Russia. But technologies like drones are not a replacement for a trained and motivated citizenry, as the Ukraine conflict illustrates. Against a stronger and more aggressive neighbour, these societies deter and respond to aggression through organized, determined, and trained populations prepared to resist attackers in-depth — by putting a potential rifle behind every blade of grass.

Canada, meanwhile, is spending money to hurt our own capacity. It’s coming back to bite us. The Trudeau government misused civilian firearm ownership as a partisan political wedge and ignored the grave flaws of that strategy when they were pointed out, hundreds of times, by good-faith critics. Thousands of firearm models have been banned at massive and increasing expense since 2020 despite no evident public safety benefit. In the recently concluded party leadership race, Mark Carney pledged to spend billions of dollars confiscating them. Government policies eliminating significant portions of business revenue have maimed a firearm industry that historically contributed to our defence infrastructure. Civilian range numbers, which often do double-duty with police and even military use, plunged from roughly 1,400 to 891 in five years. Without civilians to maintain ranges for necessary exercises and qualification shoots, governments must assume the operating expenses, construct new ranges, or fly participants elsewhere to train.

A serious, forward-thinking government could have anticipated these counterproductive consequences when Russia invaded Crimea and Donbas in 2014. It could have seen its backwardness before Bill C-21 received first reading in May 2022, a scant three months after Russian tanks openly rolled into the Ukrainian heartland and Ukraine handed firearms to civilians to help resist the invaders. Instead, our government remains committed to wedge politics.

Correction is possible. Canada has a long history of grassroots-oriented defence efforts ready to be adapted. Encouraging civilian marksmanship for military purposes was our government’s policy for much of our history. Shooting was the first Canadian sport to receive federal funding for that reason. The Dominion of Canada Rifle Association (DCRA) was incorporated by Parliament in 1868 to ensure civilians and military members were competent with military firearms should the need to serve arise. The militia reports of the day make glowing reference to the interest in the shoots. Civilians competed at DCRA Service Rifle matches with standard-issue military rifles well into the 1970s. Despite teething issues, forces we raised through these traditions were competent and feared by our enemies.

Another institution loosely analogous to those of our allies is the Canadian Rangers, founded in 1942 to project sovereignty in sparsely populated regions of Canada. Rangers are issued a firearm that’s kept with them at home, though for self-defence and sustenance rather than combat. Many Rangers are from rural and northern regions and familiar with firearms.

We should reinvigorate the mandate of these existing organizations to meet modern defensive needs. The DCRA could expand and be refined with modern Finnish- or Estonian-style training, becoming a catalyst to reopen the urban ranges short-sightedly closed in the 1990s and 2000s. Supervised civilian service rifle competitions could once more be DCRA hosted. The DCRA is suited to sell surplused rifles and ammunition to licensed and screened owners to encourage self-funded practice, as our allies do. The objectives are to expand knowledge, create a vehicle for recruitment, improve our deterrent, and provide a stronger starting point should the worst happen.

A new style of tactically-trained and localized civil defence force, taking a role between the existing Rangers and the Primary Reserve, could fill critical gaps — especially in remote areas where it is not feasible to have a permanent presence. This force, made up of regional volunteers similar to the Baltic models, could complement a full-time professional core by increasing rapid response capabilities in the vast remote areas where we struggle to project power quickly, or by contributing trained manpower to large threat events.

Major parties have proposed onshoring and increasing defence spending. Small-arms manufacturing is the perfect place to do both. The reality is that Canada is and will remain reliant on foreign partners for a significant amount of our complex materiel in the short to medium term. Small arms are not necessarily complex. They are one area where Canada can quickly onshore substantial manufacturing ability while offering value for money.

Most countries known for producing firearms and ammunition for military clients also produce for civilian clients: Zastava in Serbia, Česká Zbrojovka in Czechia, Sako in Finland, Nammo in Norway and Finland, and Norma Precision in Sweden are a few non-American examples. Colt Canada, now owned by CZ, sold civilian rifles until the 2020 prohibitions. Civilian sales nurture innovation thanks to demanding end-users and maintain production lines, avoiding excessive up- and down-tooling for sporadic individual defence contracts. Civilian sales provide a steady source of supplementary income, especially on consumables such as ammunition, and enable companies that didn’t get the latest defence contract to continue to survive and innovate until called to bid again.

Canada used to be an outstanding small arms manufacturer. Our Second World War-era production figures are almost unbelievable by today’s standards. We maintained excellent production knowledge for decades. The current government’s actions forced the industry to operate with sporadic contracts in an unpredictable legal environment. Despite the resultant low economies of scale, the tenacity of domestically-owned companies such as MDT, Cadex, and PGW shows Canada has the potential to reach high-quality, cost-effective mass production in the sector — a stark contrast to much of our defence industry.

Canada is nearly unique among middle powers in that we have the resources and expertise to sustain a modern small arms supply chain almost entirely domestically once tooled up. That will require predictable rules for manufacturers and civilians, directed state support through consistent government contracts for key items such as hammer-forged barrels, and structural encouragement of exports. Canada is not bound by the complex American ITAR rules, meaning that as other nations look to diversify small arms contracts, Canada can be easily placed to fill them.

These proposals might also help address a key social issue: trust. Reinvigorated community defence institutions will build bridges between constituencies, which the early rifle associations accomplished by being popular events on the social calendar for all political persuasions. Canadians of all stripes and regions, rural and urban, will be able to join together for a higher purpose and share institutional commonality with fellow Canadians thousands of miles away. Trusted, licensed gun owners and businesses can contribute their knowledge and experience and be treated as welcome stakeholders and partners by governments.

We need bold new ideas for our new multipolar world. While we ramp up other needed defence priorities — NORAD modernization, critical infrastructure, naval capacity, and new aircraft — Canada can look to our allies and our history to build a defensive strategy for the new paradigm. We can lean on a massive comparative advantage to improve our security situation and relaunch a defence subsector that can thrive in its own right. Our safe, capable, democratic allies have fewer resources, yet are maximizing these advantages. If we do not want to be in our present state — or worse, a 51st state — we would be wise to stop squandering ours.

Tim Thurley specializes in firearm policy, having earned a Master of Science from Leiden University with his analysis of the long-gun registry’s lack of effect on Canadian homicide rates. He lives in the Northwest Territories, where he files regular Access to Information requests on firearm issues and anything else of interest.

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