Transcript

Travis Bader: [00:00:00] I’m Travis Bader and this is The Silvercore Podcast. Join me as I discuss matters related to hunting, fishing, and outdoor pursuits with the people in businesses that comprise of the community. If you’re a new to Silvercore, be sure to check out our website, www.Silvercore.ca where you can learn more about courses, services, and products that we offer. As well as how you can join The Silvercore Club, which includes 10 million in North America wide liability insurance to ensure you are properly covered during your outdoor adventures.

[00:00:43] It’s finally here, The Silvercore Club member, who is the winner of the Bradley professional smoker is announced in this episode. When you hear your name, don’t delay in contacting our office. You have two weeks from the date, the podcast goes live to claim your prize, otherwise another lucky winner will be drawn.

[00:01:04] So today I’m speaking with Tony Bernardo with a CSSA, that’s the Canadian Shooting Sports Association. Tony’s been with them fighting for Canadians rights, firearms owners rights for, I guess, about 26 years and counting now isn’t it, Tony?

Tony Bernardo: [00:01:19] Yeah. It’s been a long time, Travis.

Travis Bader: [00:01:21] Man. So specifically today, what I’d like to talk about is the CSSA. What you guys do, learn a little bit more about the organization and be better educated on the order in council firearms prohibition that came through a few months ago. So why don’t we start with the CSSA. Can you tell us a little bit of background about what the CSSA does and is, and what you do with them?

Tony Bernardo: [00:01:47] Okay, well, it’s, it’s an old organization. We’re one of the oldest firearms organizations in the country, we’re celebrating our 61st year in operations right now, we have a fairly large staff of nine people, coast to coast. And, we have as our motto, quiet competence.

Travis Bader: [00:02:12] Right.

Tony Bernardo: [00:02:12] Okay. We don’t walk around blowing our own horn, but we’re getting the job done within the corridors of power. Then, you know, many of the, the great successes that have happened in the past in terms of rolling back C-68’s provisions have been solely CSSA’s. And things like, for example, the long gun registry. Well, the CSSA wrote the bill that killed the long gun registry with Gary Breitkreuz. And as evidence of that, Gary, of course, is now a long serving member of our board of directors.

Travis Bader: [00:02:47] That’s right, yes.

Tony Bernardo: [00:02:48] Yeah. I mean, C-42 that eliminated the authorizations for transport and so many other things that were reforms in the shoes of gun owners that get that, that bill was, was spawned by the CSSS. So many things, it’s just a long run of successes. Many of the things that we have done in the past that have been so successful, people don’t know about because I always described the work we do as prophylactic.

Travis Bader: [00:03:18] Okay.

Tony Bernardo: [00:03:18] Where you can measure your success by the things that didn’t happen.

Travis Bader: [00:03:22] Yeah.

Tony Bernardo: [00:03:23] Okay. Cause it’s sort of like men in black, you know, where there’s always an arquillian battle cruiser, orbiting the earth waiting to destroy it. Okay. It’s one of those things. It’s always there. The enemy never goes away, they lurk in the background, even things like, for example, this week we saw the lead issue arise, again.

Travis Bader: [00:03:46] Right.

Tony Bernardo: [00:03:46] Now, this is the 6th or 7th time, that I can remember, led rearing its head, coming out of Environment Canada. And the success of governments of the day, which by the way, we’re not all conservative governments slapping them back down saying we’re not dealing with this. Okay. We’re not going to go out there and tell people they can’t shoot lead bullets.

Travis Bader: [00:04:11] Is that what they’re trying to do?

Tony Bernardo: [00:04:12] Oh yeah. They’re trying to do a complete elimination on lead for all sporting uses. And that includes a fishing sinkers, jig heads, bullets shot. You know, so you can expect that this, this harassment will continue until you such a time that Environment Canada is totally purged of all the Environ-weenies we need.

[00:04:35] And by the way, that’s not going to be in your lifetime or mine. So this is, this is a fight we’re going to be fighting for the foreseeable future. And it’s like playing whack-a-mole, cause when you nail ’em on one spot, they pop up in another one. And you know, we, we thought that the liberals had put a stay on the lead issue for the last while and, it seemed to be pretty good.

[00:05:01] And then what happened was along comes a warping now on not fishing sinkers and jig heads back up, one more time, just this last week.

Travis Bader: [00:05:10] Really?

Tony Bernardo: [00:05:10] Another study. Yeah, they did a study a few years back from a company in British Columbia. And you can sort of see the foregoing conclusions of when the company is called Talks Ecology.

Travis Bader: [00:05:26] Come on. Yeah. Is there an agenda there? No, no, not at all.

Tony Bernardo: [00:05:30] No, no, no agenda. Gee, hardly anything. You know, that was the company they hired to do the study. So this sort of stuff was fermenting in the background 24-7

Travis Bader: [00:05:41] With lead, I was always under the impression that it, once it’s oxidized. It’s essentially inert.

Tony Bernardo: [00:05:49] Well that, that’s not an impression, that’s the truth.

Travis Bader: [00:05:52] Okay.

Tony Bernardo: [00:05:52] You know, CSSA is a member of the executive committee of the rule forum on shooting activities, which is an international think tank, comprised of the major firearms organizations from all around the world. And we do information symposiums. We’ve done two or three now on lead. Because, of course in Europe is a much bigger issue than it is in North America.

Travis Bader: [00:06:17] Right.

Tony Bernardo: [00:06:17] And in Canada, it’s even smaller than it is in the United States. Lead simply just doesn’t raise its head here very often. But in Europe it’s a big deal. So we brought in some of the greatest and brightest minds on lead pollution and environmental toxicology on this stuff.  And we listened to what they said and what they said was exactly what you said 24 hours after that lead bullet has had new, lead exposed to its surface, the oxygen in the air, mixed with a little bit of moisture, hits the lead, forms an oxidizing layer over it and encapsulates them.

Travis Bader: [00:06:59] Right.

Tony Bernardo: [00:06:59] Yeah. And we’ve actually had well testing where the well was not more than 40 or 50 feet away from the shooting range with zero lead contamination after years and years of shooting.

Travis Bader: [00:07:12] And I guess the, the big problem with lead would be the remediation process when everyone gets concerned and wanting to dig it all up and you’re scraping it up and removing that oxidization layer and you’re actually making a bigger problem than, than you had originally.

Tony Bernardo: [00:07:25] Well, that’s right, because as I say, the lead’s inert and you know, all the lead that’s used in the production of bullets is recycled, there was, there was no, no virgin lead used in the production of bullets. Everything is recycled from car batteries.

Travis Bader: [00:07:39] Huh.

Tony Bernardo: [00:07:40] Yeah, so that’s something that most people don’t know most of the.

Travis Bader: [00:07:42] I didn’t know that.

Tony Bernardo: [00:07:43] Enviro’s don’t know that, you know. But you know, that was the big, the big hue and cry when they shut down the last lead factory smelter in the United States a few years ago. It was, Oh my God, where are we going to get our bullets from? Well, bullets have never come from those places. They’ve always come from recycling.

Travis Bader: [00:08:01] Interesting.

Tony Bernardo: [00:08:02] Yeah. We’re doing our part. We’re using the stuff again and again, and you can mine the lead from a shooting range. There’s now machines that could actually do that developed outside of Canada by the countries that, had their backs to the wall on the lead issue.

Travis Bader: [00:08:20] Right.

Tony Bernardo: [00:08:20] But those technologies are available. You can mine lead and now the great thing is less expensive.

Travis Bader: [00:08:27] Yeah.

Tony Bernardo: [00:08:27] So you can actually like mine it out of the ground and actually make a lot of money on it and then return it back, in the form of spent bullets. It just makes me crazy.

Travis Bader: [00:08:40] I love it. Well, it’s gotta be difficult to be working in a prophylactic sense, working sort of in the shadows to mitigate anything that comes up, before it comes up. And then I get it, I mean, you can’t be jumping up and shouting out all your successes. Otherwise you’re not going to have those connections with the, the politicians and the decision makers that, you’re not going to have their trust, essentially. But I guess it’s gotta be difficult to play that role. And then also, still be able to show the members what you doing.

Tony Bernardo: [00:09:13] Yeah, it is. It can be very problematic, you know, because working with politicians is like being in a marriage where if you’re going to do this smart, you give them the credit.

Travis Bader: [00:09:25] Right.

Tony Bernardo: [00:09:26] Yeah.

Travis Bader: [00:09:26] Sure.

Tony Bernardo: [00:09:26] You know, sure. You know when they, when your family does something great, and you tell your wife how wonderful she is. You know. This is just how the smart, the smart game was played.

Travis Bader: [00:09:37] Right.

Tony Bernardo: [00:09:38] Politicians have two jobs essentially. Their first job is to get elected, their second job is to get reelected. So everything that you do to further that makes them like you more. So when you can go and work with politicians, and there are many good politicians, contrary to popular belief, people who’ve been watching too much Trudeau.

[00:10:04] But there are good politicians out there. People who try very hard, they do their best to do good things for the country. When you can get those people on side and you can accomplish something, you’d be an absolute idiot not to give them the credit for that.

Travis Bader: [00:10:19] Absolutely.

Tony Bernardo: [00:10:20] Right. Which means you can’t take the credit for that, but then again, in this job you don’t want to.

Travis Bader: [00:10:26] Mhmm.

Tony Bernardo: [00:10:27] Okay. Because if you do it, it just attracts fire.

Travis Bader: [00:10:31] That’s it.

Tony Bernardo: [00:10:32] Yeah. The enemies that we have, what would accuse us of manipulating government, which by the way, we never do. We never, we don’t need to, the truth is on our side.

Travis Bader: [00:10:42] That’s right.

Tony Bernardo: [00:10:43] Right. So we just to make things apparent to politicians that, this is the truth of the matter. We can even prove everything we say.

Travis Bader: [00:10:54] It’s sort of a losing battle though. You’re never going to win over the naysayers and there’s always going to be people who are going to be pointing fingers and making allegations.

Tony Bernardo: [00:11:04] Yeah. Yeah. But I mean the bottom line here is, or are we trying to do what’s best for the CSSA or are we trying to do what’s best for gun owners of Canada?

Travis Bader: [00:11:13] Well, you guys have definitely celebrated a lot of wins for gun owners.

Tony Bernardo: [00:11:17] We have.

Travis Bader: [00:11:17] In Canada and.

Tony Bernardo: [00:11:20] We have.

Travis Bader: [00:11:21] Oh yeah, and right now. Tell me that, this order in council firearms prohibition that came through, is this a first time that an order in council has been used for firearms, prohibitions?

Tony Bernardo: [00:11:33] Nope. It’s been used a couple of times.

Travis Bader: [00:11:36] Okay.

Tony Bernardo: [00:11:37] Well, first of all, prior to bill C-68 implementation, the entire list of prohibited firearms we have right now, which is a pro, prohibition order, 10 and 11 I believe. Those prohibition orders, I may have those numbers wrong, but those prohibition orders form the basis for sections 12(3), 12.4, 12.5. Okay. So those prohibition orders were originally done under the Campbell administration, yes, a conservative administration.

Travis Bader: [00:12:11] Right.

Tony Bernardo: [00:12:12] They were done by order in council. Now when C-68 was written, order in council was written into the provisions of the bill as a means of prohibiting firearms. This is really interesting because order in council, but it’s not new. It’s one of the fundamental essences of a democratic government.

Travis Bader: [00:12:33] Right.

Tony Bernardo: [00:12:33] And it’s designed to streamline the government. The purposes for order in council are for any item that is inconsequential. Ie, we’re going to change the colour of the paper from beige to tope.

Travis Bader: [00:12:50] Sure.

Tony Bernardo: [00:12:50] Okay, nobody cares, just do it. You know, the second one is for anything that is absolutely time sensitive. Like the Japanese have just landed on Vancouver Island and we need to move the army now.

Travis Bader: [00:13:08] Right.

Tony Bernardo: [00:13:09] Time sensitive, very time sensitive. And then C-68 created a third use for order in council, and that was to ban guns. It had never been done like that.

Travis Bader: [00:13:21] Interesting.

Tony Bernardo: [00:13:22] You know Kim, Kim Campbell has gone way out on a limb to use order council to create those early prohibition lists. And C-68 ratified the minister’s ability to use order in council to continue to do that. Now, when the Harper conservatives were in power, oh those were happy days weren’t they? Remember when adults were in our country? It was great.

Travis Bader: [00:13:45] Yes, I do.

Tony Bernardo: [00:13:50] Steven Blaney, who was the public safety minister at the time.

Travis Bader: [00:13:53] Yes.

Tony Bernardo: [00:13:53] Absolutely awesome good guy.

Travis Bader: [00:13:56] Yes.

Tony Bernardo: [00:13:56] Best public safety minister I ever worked under.

Travis Bader: [00:13:59] Yep.

Tony Bernardo: [00:14:00] And Steven Blaney said, we’re going to even this playing field, instead of being able to use order in counsel to restrict or prohibit firearms, well, you know what, we’re going to add one more categories of that, we’re going to be able to use it to non restrict firearms.

Travis Bader: [00:14:19] Good.

Tony Bernardo: [00:14:20] Yeah.

Travis Bader: [00:14:20] And that kinda makes sense.

Tony Bernardo: [00:14:22] Well, yeah, if you’re going to get to go two out of the three, you must we’ll do the third one too right?

Travis Bader: [00:14:27] Sure.

Tony Bernardo: [00:14:28] Right. And then immediately he used that order in council power to take the CZ 858, which the RCMP had come up with this, very, very loosey goosey interpretation that somehow this was a converted full auto. And we can get into detail on that if you want to, but it’s kind of irrelevant to the story. And to the Swiss Arms Rifles, the Swiss Arms Classic series rifles, the RCMP had determined that they were actually a variant of a SIG rifle, but they weren’t a variant of, according to the company that made the guns and decided that they were and went ahead and prohibited them too. We’ll Steven.

Travis Bader: [00:15:14] I remember that.

Tony Bernardo: [00:15:15] Said, okay, well wait a minute. You know, like rather than mess around slapping you guys until you see the error of your evil ways. We’re just going to use an order in council and reverse your decision. Poof, done, have a great day.

Travis Bader: [00:15:27] Right.

Tony Bernardo: [00:15:28] Right. So, that was, that was done and accomplished. And those two firearms came off of the prohibited list. But you know, the Horseman, they never ever changed the FRTs. What it said was that the CZ 858 was a 12(3) Non-restricted.

Travis Bader: [00:15:51] What?

Tony Bernardo: [00:15:54] Steven Blaney had made it a non restricted firearm.

Travis Bader: [00:15:57] A 12(3) non-restricted.

Tony Bernardo: [00:15:59] But the RCMP refused to back down on their opinion and said it was a 12(3), but non-restricted. Like just, just wild. They just never quit.

Travis Bader: [00:16:11] There’s so much ego involved in that too.

Tony Bernardo: [00:16:14] Oh yeah. So much so. Yeah, for sure. Murray Smith, who was the head of the lab at the time.

Travis Bader: [00:16:20] I remember Murray.

Tony Bernardo: [00:16:21] Yeah Murray was really bent. Well, you know, Murray’s, he’s now retired, right?

Travis Bader: [00:16:25] I actually did a, I was a subject matter expert in a court case and Murray was on the other side. I get to speak first, so I got to sit in and listen to him speak, it was, it was interesting.

Tony Bernardo: [00:16:36] Oh, he’s a knowledgeable man and there’s no question about it. But,  while he really, really likes guns, he also believes he’s the only one that should actually be allowed to own them. And, Murray’s now retired and he’s left the, the Canada Firearms Program labs and is now working as a consultant to the PMO.

Travis Bader: [00:16:58] Interesting. Funny how that works eh?

Tony Bernardo: [00:17:02] I’ve wondered how that happens hey? I’ve wondered how that happens. But yeah, so, that order in council’s used in that, and it’s been used a couple of other minor times. But most of the prohibitions that happened in the years were C-68 to now, most of them were RCMP reclassifications.

Travis Bader: [00:17:22] Right.

Tony Bernardo: [00:17:23] Right, where they said, Oh, woopsies we know it’s been non-restricted for 15 years, but we made a booboo. So now we’re going to make it a prohibited gun right?

Travis Bader: [00:17:31] Yeah.

Tony Bernardo: [00:17:31] You know, along with such silliness, as things like that, little Walther G22 plastic stock decided they’d ban. And of course the, that 22 rifle, the Blaze, the Mossberg Blaze.

Travis Bader: [00:17:46] Yep.

Tony Bernardo: [00:17:47] Where you had the Blaze and you had the Blaze 47 and the Blaze rifles were absolutely identical. Identical. Except one had a yucky plastic stock that was sort of like a regular rifle stock and the other one had a yucky plastic stock that from 200 yards away, somebody might mistake for an AK-47.

Travis Bader: [00:18:09] See, that’s evil.

Tony Bernardo: [00:18:11] Well, it’s evil just in the way it looks, so they declared Blaze 47 to be a variant of an AK-47. Then they banned that. But the Blaze is still available for sale in Canada. And I know this will stun you, but the Blaze 47 stock is available as an aftermarket item. So you could take your Blaze, you can put it in a Blaze 47 stock and it’s identical to a Blaze 47, but it’s not prohibited.

Travis Bader: [00:18:41] You know, I’ve given up trying to make sense out of the rationale behind a lot of these laws that come through. Having operated the business, I guess 2003 is when I incorporated Silvercore and we’ve been dealing with the RCMP Firearms Program and all of the different shenanigans and personalities that come through there, it’s, to try and actually put some logic and sense behind it, I think it’s a losing battle personally.

Tony Bernardo: [00:19:11] Yeah. It’s pretty difficult to rationalize how they view things. I know that Mr. Smith has testified in court what his version of a variant is.

Travis Bader: [00:19:23] Mhmm.

Tony Bernardo: [00:19:23] And I know that, that this, this is a revelation to most of your listeners, because most of them we’ve ever seen any of this, you know, variant stuff. It’s like how could a two shot, bolt action shotgun, be a variant of an AR15. And yet they did that to the Adler shotgun didn’t they? Right.

Travis Bader: [00:19:45] And then was that based on Mr. Smith’s?

Tony Bernardo: [00:19:47] It’s Mr. Smith’s ruling it’s, it’s based on paragraph 87 of the order in council, which is the AR15 section. And the Adler has been prohibited as a variant of the AR15, despite it being a two shot, bolt action shotgun. And the reason is because it has a carry handle.

Travis Bader: [00:20:09] Mhmm.

Tony Bernardo: [00:20:10] And the reasoning that Mr. Smith always used was that, if the parent firearm had never existed, then the child firearm would not exist now.

Travis Bader: [00:20:23] That’s a bit of a leap.

Tony Bernardo: [00:20:24] Well, yeah, because the Blaze 47, which is a blowback 22 rimfire, that somebody put a crappy plastic stock on that vaguely looks like an AK. That AK stock would have never existed had not a real AK happened in the first place. Now, never-mind the fact that the evolution of firearms is based upon function and ergonomics and.

Travis Bader: [00:20:51] Sure.

Tony Bernardo: [00:20:51] Since human beings have essentially remained unchanged for a long, long time, they’re bound to hone it down to pistol grips and elevated sights and straight lap back recoil.

Travis Bader: [00:21:01] Yep.

Tony Bernardo: [00:21:02] And all that kind of stuff. It was guaranteed to happen, simply from the evolution of the ergonomics of the firearm. So you are preemptively stopping any kind of development because as developments become more and more common, guns start to look more and more like each other.

Travis Bader: [00:21:24] Well, maybe that’s the end goal.

Tony Bernardo: [00:21:26] Well, yeah, of course it is.

Travis Bader: [00:21:28] Right. I mean, come on.

Tony Bernardo: [00:21:31] At the end of the day, they want to ban them all.

Travis Bader: [00:21:34] Oh, I don’t know if they, they want to regulate them all very tightly, because if they’re all banned. What are they going to do for work, right? They keep them crying for more funding.

Tony Bernardo: [00:21:45] Well, don’t worry. They’ll find something to do.

Travis Bader: [00:21:47] Exactly.

Tony Bernardo: [00:21:48] Criminals guns won’t get banned.

Travis Bader: [00:21:50] Well, let’s talk about the order in council. I wouldn’t mind getting a better idea of, of the newly prohibited firearms and, and maybe there’s some light at the end of the tunnel. If there, CSSA has any ideas or thoughts on, sometimes a bit more positive though, we can put our energies towards to come up with something that makes more sense than, than this prohibition.

Tony Bernardo: [00:22:13] Okay. Well, I’ve got a 100%  cure for the prohibition.

Travis Bader: [00:22:17] Okay.

Tony Bernardo: [00:22:18] Okay. And it’s actually really, really simple. Change the government.

Travis Bader: [00:22:23] Yeah, well, and that’s it. I mean, that’s, that’s where the change is going to happen.

Tony Bernardo: [00:22:27] Right. Every real change is going to come from a change of government. You know, the, the conservatives are currently in a leadership race as you know. All four of the people with the conservative party have pledged to undo everything the liberals have done on this stuff.

Travis Bader: [00:22:44] Mhmm.

Tony Bernardo: [00:22:45] Some of the ones who know a fair bit about firearms and firearms regulations will have pledged to do much, much more, much more. So things like the simplified classification system, which exists in conservative policy right now. And if you go back to the original policy documents, you’ll see the simplified classification was written by the CSSA.

Travis Bader: [00:23:17] Excellent.

Tony Bernardo: [00:23:18] Yeah, it absolutely is. And simplified classification was designed to keep Canadians safe first and foremost, but also take this ridiculous silly classification system that owners, police, judges, prosecutors, no one can figure out how this works.

Travis Bader: [00:23:40] Right.

Tony Bernardo: [00:23:41] Right. Which is why virtually every time police service now has its own dedicated firearms officers that are specially trained, just in figuring out what the gun is and what classification it belongs to.

Travis Bader: [00:23:54] And the difficult part is, is in once they figure that out, they’ll hold the common citizen to that highest standard. When it took somebody, with specialist courses and a background in the laws and firearms identification, to be able to arrive at that conclusion. Yet the common firearms owners expected to know this.

Tony Bernardo: [00:24:12] You’re a very knowledgeable guy on firearms issues and firearms, and you don’t know everything there is to know at this.

Travis Bader: [00:24:19] No.

Tony Bernardo: [00:24:19] I’ve been doing this for a living for over 25 years and I don’t know everything there is to know at this.

Travis Bader: [00:24:26] Right.

Tony Bernardo: [00:24:26] And I can’t think of anybody who does cause even people like Murray Smith has been surprised in court more than once. So it’s a moving target, which is really difficult. Now, if you’re a coffer and you’re really trying to do your job and you come across a gun and you want to find out if that gun is a restricted or prohibited firearm. If you’ve got the simplified classification in your holster, you have the ability to do this with a tape measure.

Travis Bader: [00:24:55] Right.

Tony Bernardo: [00:24:56] It’s so easy to do. Any police officer can figure this out. You know, it retains the same classifications that we have now, as in, restricted, prohibited, non-restricted. But the definitions of what those things mean completely change.

Travis Bader: [00:25:15] And it’s based on length?

Tony Bernardo: [00:25:17] Well, not just length, but function too. Okay. So a firearm that is prohibited would be a firearm A) that is full auto, or B) one that is reduced to less than 26 inches, that’s 660 mm’s,  by means of sawing or cutting. In other words, somebody’s cut down a gun.

Travis Bader: [00:25:43] Right.

Tony Bernardo: [00:25:43] Okay. Very, very few people cut down a gun for good purposes. So it was a gimme that we did for our friends of law enforcement. And so it’s full auto and guns cut down below 26 inches. That’s, that’s it, that’s what’s prohibited. So when you go to restricted it’s any fire that is a handgun, and of course that’s using the existing Canadian definition of a handgun, which is firearm designed to be operated by the action on one hand.

Travis Bader: [00:26:14] Right.

Tony Bernardo: [00:26:14] Okay. Any firearm that is a handgun or any firearm reduced to less than 26 inches by means of folding, telescoping, or other mechanical means. So if you’ve got a gun that folds up to be shorter than 26 inches, it’s restricted, it’s a handgun.

Travis Bader: [00:26:31] Interesting.

Tony Bernardo: [00:26:31] Okay. And everything else on the list is non-restricted because it’s not full auto. It’s not easily concealable, it’s not a handgun, it’s not sawed off. And this is so easy that anybody can figure out what category the guns in by simply A) looking at it and B) pulling out a tape measure.

Travis Bader: [00:26:52] Well, it’ll be interesting to see if that ever makes it into our, into our laws. That’d be a, it’d be nice to have something that’s easier to work with. That’s for sure.

Tony Bernardo: [00:27:00] Well, for sure. And you know, the, the conservatives, this has been part of the official party policy for four years now. And it’s in trying right in there party policy. Peter McKay, Erin O’Toole and Derek Sloan have all pledged to implement it. So, you know, the, this, this is, this is a very, very good turn of events for us.

[00:27:27] The other thing that we’ve been advocating for for quite a long time. And it’s been picked up on quite a few members of the conservative party, including some of their policy stuff is a plain language rewrite.

Travis Bader: [00:27:40] Okay.

Tony Bernardo: [00:27:41] Now, you know, the, one of the biggest problems with the firearm chapters, nobody can understand what it means.

Travis Bader: [00:27:48] Right and it’s.

Tony Bernardo: [00:27:49] It’s gotta be simplified.

Travis Bader: [00:27:50] Right and it’s being cherry picked and things are being interpreted in, in ways that I don’t necessarily believe were in the spirit of the law, that they were originally drafted.

Tony Bernardo: [00:28:02] Right.

Travis Bader: [00:28:04] Mind you.

Tony Bernardo: [00:28:04] Right.

Travis Bader: [00:28:04] We kind of have to watch out on those plain english ones, like the plain english, sorry, the, the common sense licensing, the, back in 2015, when they’re talking about that and they did away with the paper form ATT’s.

Tony Bernardo: [00:28:15] Right.

Travis Bader: [00:28:16] They also did away with challenges for firearm safety course training.

Tony Bernardo: [00:28:21] Yes. But that, those two things were not related to each other.

Travis Bader: [00:28:25] Right.

Tony Bernardo: [00:28:25] Right. And, and the challenges ,the doing away with the challenges, as I said, I was in the room when all of that stuff was going on and it came about because of massive numbers of complaints from instructors across the country.

Travis Bader: [00:28:39] Interesting.

Tony Bernardo: [00:28:39] They were having people that were, shall we say, fudging the challenges.

Travis Bader: [00:28:47] Right.

Tony Bernardo: [00:28:47] And they’d get somebody in and they’d basically do the exam for them. And those instructors were defraud, even think a couple of them were charged.

Travis Bader: [00:28:58] Good.

Tony Bernardo: [00:28:59] Yeah. Well, yeah. Absolutely.

Travis Bader: [00:29:01] Hell yes.

Tony Bernardo: [00:29:02] When, when they asked me my, my opinion of it at the time, it was like, cook ’em. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we, we have a culture of safety that we’ve spent hundreds of years developing. We’re proud of it. So we don’t want anybody messing with that.

Travis Bader: [00:29:23] With the OIC, we’ve got a little bit of a, a grace period now don’t we?

Tony Bernardo: [00:29:31] Two years.

Travis Bader: [00:29:32] Now here’s a question. If somebody is in possession of a newly prohibited firearm, they’ve got two years to remain in possession of that firearm without facing any criminal consequences.

Tony Bernardo: [00:29:45] Right.

Travis Bader: [00:29:45] What if they wanted to transport it? Because I don’t think they are being, I don’t think that’s allowed is it?

Tony Bernardo: [00:29:55] It just for a couple of different purposes. Okay. You can transport it to a gunsmith for the purpose of deactivation.

Travis Bader: [00:30:03] Sure.

Tony Bernardo: [00:30:04] You can transport it to the police for the.

Travis Bader: [00:30:06] The police.

Tony Bernardo: [00:30:06] Purpose of destruction.

Travis Bader: [00:30:08] Right. And those already existed in the, in the criminal code.

Tony Bernardo: [00:30:12] That’s right. That’s right. The other one that is really, really crazy is the one we’ve had problems with. There’s no provision to transport the firearm for the purposes of changing residences.

Travis Bader: [00:30:25] And that’s where I was going. I got a phone call yesterday from someone who works with us, and he also works with Western Canada’s largest supplier for law enforcement supplies. And he says I’m a little confused, bought a new place, I’m moving. I don’t think I’m allowed to do this. I phoned up the firearm centre and they said, Oh, you’re covered, it’s okay. He said, well okay can you give that to me in writing? Nope. So he phones me, he says do you know anything on this? I’m like, you know, I don’t.

Tony Bernardo: [00:30:57] No, I do. I mean, we had one of the first cases of this was a CSSA member and we actually had some experience with this because way back, way back in C-68’s  days, when the new laws were implemented, they had no ATT for the purposes of changing residences.

Travis Bader: [00:31:19] Right.

Tony Bernardo: [00:31:19] And you won’t believe who the first person to challenge that was.

Travis Bader: [00:31:24] It’d be you guys.

Tony Bernardo: [00:31:25] No, it was me.

Travis Bader: [00:31:26] It was you.

Tony Bernardo: [00:31:28] It was me personally. I, I had to move it just a few days after it was implemented. And so I called up the, the chief lawyer for the firearm centre, who was truly a wonderful person. Okay. Very, very honest, straight shooter, no pun intended. And is now in a position that is really, really lofty, and we’re not going to go there right now, but a more offline, I can talk more to you about who this person is, you’ll recognize them right away.

[00:31:58] And then I called her up and I said, okay, I have a problem. I have restricted and prohibited firearms, I have to change residences. I can’t leave them with the old residence because the new people are taking possession and I can’t leave them with them. Because at the end of the day, I’m responsible for them. So can you give me an ATT?

[00:32:22] And they said, no, there’s no provision. I said, okay, well then here’s what we’re going to do. I’m going to move to the firearms illegally because I have no choice. I can’t leave them with these people who are not entitled to possess them.

[00:32:35] So I’m going to blew the firearms illegally and what I arrive at my new house. I’m going to phone the local police inform them of just transported all these firearms illegally, insist they come over and charge me and you will be in the very first person I subpoena. And she took a big gulp and said, well, I’ll see what I can do. And about 25 minutes later, my fax machine went off and out came a, the ATT.

Travis Bader: [00:33:08] Well, there’s that way to do it? Definitely.

Tony Bernardo: [00:33:10] Well, what happened was, this was when we had our member phone and say, like I’m supposed to move in four days and they’re telling me they won’t give me an ATT. What do I do? And I repeated the story to him, I said, you have to move  them, you have no choice.

Travis Bader: [00:33:25] That’s right.

Tony Bernardo: [00:33:26] You have to move them. And so the gentleman got back to the, the firearm centre and explained this to them. And we, we did some work with a couple of the CFOs that, of course they’re the ones who actually issued the ATT’s and, they just said, you know what, we’re going to issue the ATT’s period. We can issue an ATT for any good and sufficient reason.

[00:33:49] Well, this is a good and sufficient reason. There we go, we’re we’re doing that. We’re taking it on our own responsibility and to heck with what the order in council says, we’re going to issue the ATT’s so people don’t find themselves in this position of jeopardy.

Travis Bader: [00:34:04] So that’s the advice that I should pass on to the, the other individual here who’s, who’s moving as we speak.

Tony Bernardo: [00:34:09] Right, right. Absolutely. What could they do to him?

Travis Bader: [00:34:13] Well, yeah, that’s exactly. What I said to him. And I said, tell  them, you’re moving it and have them tell you, you can’t essentially. Seek tacit approval, but I like your approach of going one step further.

Tony Bernardo: [00:34:26] Well, you know, the, the thing is, is that, now and I’ve seen from several of our members, who’ve called me up and said, you know, you were having problems with this.

[00:34:34] Well, here’s what they did with me and now that you phone in and then they just give you the ATT. They’re not, they’re not even second guessing. They’ve been told by the powers higher above them for, you know, for God’s sake, just give them the ATT.

Travis Bader: [00:34:49] I mean, it just makes sense come on.

Tony Bernardo: [00:34:51] Well, yeah, and it is symptomatic though, of how badly this order in counsel is written.

Travis Bader: [00:34:59] What can people do right now? Obviously we can encourage them to vote for the conservative party. But there’s a time period between now and then. Now CSSA, you guys are obviously on it and working on it. And you’ve got a couple of endeavours that you’re working on at the moment. Aren’t you there?

Tony Bernardo: [00:35:16] Yes sir.

Travis Bader: [00:35:17] Anything you can talk on?

Tony Bernardo: [00:35:18] Sure. Absolutely. We are backing two court cases.

Travis Bader: [00:35:22] Right.

Tony Bernardo: [00:35:22] Okay. The court cases are the civil litigants judicial review. Which is being conducted by a gentleman named Arkadi Bouchelev out of Toronto Arkadi is not specifically a firearms lawyer, he’s a litigation lawyer. He has a couple of stunning successes to his name and is taken on this job on behalf of the nine civil litigants. Individuals.

Travis Bader: [00:35:49] Okay.

Tony Bernardo: [00:35:49] Who are doing this. This is interesting because this is the only case that’s composed of individuals.

Travis Bader: [00:35:56] Okay.

Tony Bernardo: [00:35:56] That’s one of the reasons we backed that. The other one is the KKS Tactical from Prince George, British Columbia, and Solomon Friedman is conducting that. Solomon’s an all time  experienced gun lawyer and he’s quite talented.

Travis Bader: [00:36:12] Yeah.

Tony Bernardo: [00:36:13] And the KKS Tactical was the first one under the gate of the business lawyers of the business suits. So we decided to back one for the industry, one for individuals and that’s why we went the route we did.

Travis Bader: [00:36:27] And these guys have GoFundMe pages set up too don’t they?

Tony Bernardo: [00:36:30] Oh, yeah, absolutely. And you couldn’t even donate to either one of those simply by going on the CSSA website, right there on the front page, donate to the challenges, click it, it’s secure, you can use your credit cards. You can do anything like that. Just straight in, it’s all secure stuff. But you can make a donation right to the suits. They’re both based on section 1.17.5 of the Firearms Act.

Travis Bader: [00:36:55] Okay.

Tony Bernardo: [00:36:55] 1.17.5 is important. We, we recognized that very early in the game, as being what we considered to be the, the gold standard as how you could beat this.

Travis Bader: [00:37:11] Right.

Tony Bernardo: [00:37:11] 1.17.5 basically says that the minister can make an opinion as to whether or not the firearms are suitable for sporting use or hunting in Canada.

Travis Bader: [00:37:28] Right.

Tony Bernardo: [00:37:29] This is being done through order in council, which bypasses the parliamentary process. Well, years and years ago, the courts ruled that if the government was to do things like this through order in council, because it has a bypass on parliament rescrutiny that the courts would provide scrutiny. And they ruled that, many years ago, that the minister, yes is entitled to his opinion, but it has to be a reasonable opinion.

Travis Bader: [00:38:03] Right. The discretion isn’t unfettered.

Tony Bernardo: [00:38:07] Right. Now, I can tell you from experience that this is not a reasonable opinion. For them to tell me that my mini 30 is not suitable for shooting deer when I’ve done about 15 deer with the thing. Is an unreasonable opinion because I know that in the areas I hunt, my mini 30 goes, bang flop. I have venison in my freezer and I’m pretty happy with that. So I don’t think this minister’s opinion is a reasonable one. You’ve got the government of Canada for 40 years, issuing authorizations to transport AR15 firearms all over the country for the purposes of sporting competitions.

Travis Bader: [00:38:53] That’s right.

Tony Bernardo: [00:38:54] And now you’re telling me that it’s no good for sporting competitions. Well, where did the hell have you been for 40 years? These things are all true. You know, the fact is that the AR15 is eminently suitable for hunting. It’s the most common new hunting firearms in the United States.

Travis Bader: [00:39:15] Oh yeah.

Tony Bernardo: [00:39:16] Yeah. Can 350 million Americans be that wrong? Well, there’s an awful lot of venison piling and wild pork, you know, based upon the fact that those firearms are suitable for hunting. Of course they are, we all know that, but the government’s opinion is full of it. And 117.15 is actionable and it’s challengeable.

Travis Bader: [00:39:40] Is 117.15 what was employed for the 12(6) Firearms?

Tony Bernardo: [00:39:46] No. There was mention to in, but way back in the years of the 12(6) it, it was, it was part of that okay. But most of it had to do with retroactive law. Okay. For the period of 95 to 98, it was two and a half years there where C-68 to become law, but  it had not come into force yet.

Travis Bader: [00:40:09] Right.

Tony Bernardo: [00:40:10] For that two and a half year period, people were able to legally go out and buy 12.6’s. When the law came into force, it contained a retroactive date that was backdated two and a half years. We, we equated this to the court as being, you’re driving down the road and the speed limits 80K, well next week they make it 60K and they give you a ticket cause last week you were doing 80K.

Travis Bader: [00:40:37] Right.

Tony Bernardo: [00:40:37] Right. Retroactive law. Sadly, the judge didn’t see it that way. We lost the case. But that, that was the main, main focus.

Travis Bader: [00:40:47] But they made exceptions for short barrel, 2,5 32 calibre handguns for sporting purposes. Cause I believe at the time that the Canadian Olympic team was using high end 32 calibre.

Tony Bernardo: [00:41:00] Yes. What, what, what they made was an exempt list. Okay, specifically for the Olympic people. Now we tried to get them to adopt the ISSF.

Travis Bader: [00:41:12] Right.

Tony Bernardo: [00:41:13] Standard. Okay. ISSF standard was that there was a box, a wooden box and if the pistol would sit inside that wooden box, it was exempt. So we thought, Hey, I’ve got a couple of 380’s that’ll sit inside  that wooden box, no sweat. Unfortunately they didn’t see it our way. And they went with an actual list of firearms that are exempt from that. Basically because the 32 calibre olympic pistols.

Travis Bader: [00:41:44] I’m going to take a real quick moment here, quick segue. When the order in council dropped and the firearms prohibition came in, there’s a lot of confusion. There was a lot of upset and we got a lot of phone calls to our office from members and the general public asking, what do we know about this? And everyone was just scrambling and trying to learn.

[00:42:09] And some had a little bit of insight, but we’re doing what we could talking with everybody. By the end of the day, we got one interesting call guy by the name of Wade Bradley, he owns Bradley Smokers. He called up and he was livid. He says, look it, I, I don’t know, I’m taking off to my cabin, I’m going to do some fishing, I need to cool off here, but I tell you what I really like what Silvercore has been doing for the firearms community. Wade’s a Silvercore Member as well.

[00:43:12] And everybody else out there just know that the boys and girls of Bradley Smokers, they’re run by hunters and anglers and firearms enthusiasts. They donate to our gun orgs, they support our shared endeavour, and if you’re moved by their generosity, please consider letting them know in any way you feel is appropriate. So we got the winner announced there. So we’ve got that in there. I’m not going to put that in the show notes, so they actually have to listen to get that.

Travis Bader: [00:44:28] So with the, we’ve got two years. Obviously, best case is a new government coming through.

Tony Bernardo: [00:44:37] Yeah.

Travis Bader: [00:44:37] One that’s more sympathetic. But there’s going to be little things that pop up, like people who don’t know, like the fellow who contacted me yesterday, he just contacted the BC CFO and they gave him the, the nope, you’re not getting an ATT and just go away essentially. Can people call up the CSSA if they’ve got questions?

Tony Bernardo: [00:44:59] Absolutely it’s 1-888-873-4339.

Travis Bader: [00:45:04] There it is. And you guys will be able to point them in the right direction anyways, and they might even want to want to consider joining the organization.

Tony Bernardo: [00:45:12] Absolutely. We help people every day and not all of them are members. You know, we, we help people even when they’re not members in the hopes that maybe they’ll they’ll realize the valuable service that we provide and they’ll become members association. Like every other not-for-profit association, we are constantly, you know, recruiting.

[00:45:34] We, we are right now, the largest firearms organization in Canada. And, we have, all of our memberships are full memberships. We don’t have things like associate memberships. They’re all full memberships.

Travis Bader: [00:45:48] Right.

Tony Bernardo: [00:45:48] We have 37,000 full memberships in Canada. So that’s, that’s pretty big. We’re, we’re a good size organization. Which is like I say how we have nine staff.

Travis Bader: [00:45:58] So those funds are all going towards legal actions and fighting for the rights of firearms owners or your nine staff are getting very well paid.

Tony Bernardo: [00:46:10] No, no, we’re, we’re a not-for-profit association, we are not very well paid. We we’ve got four office staff that do absolutely nothing but administer memberships.

Travis Bader: [00:46:21] Right.

Tony Bernardo: [00:46:22] You know, it’s a big association and, you know, we we’ve kept the costs of the association down. A memberships $45 a year, that includes calibre magazine, it includes a weekly newsletter plus for any special bulletins. It includes free classified advertising coast to coast amongst the members.

Travis Bader: [00:46:41] That’s right.

Tony Bernardo: [00:46:42] And yeah, and I mean there’s lots and lots of benefits that you get for your 45 bucks.

Travis Bader: [00:46:47] Yeah that advertising, that’s, and that’s basically like a buy and sell.

Tony Bernardo: [00:46:51] Yeah. Yeah, it is. And it’s fantastic. Most of the ads sell  in the 48 hours.

Travis Bader: [00:46:56] And these are all people who are members of the CSSA. So there’s a level of vetting that takes place there. Like obviously you can’t vet everybody that comes through. If someone wants a scam, that’s, they’ll do that. But there’s a higher level of trust.

Tony Bernardo: [00:47:10] Absolutely. Because the people who are subscribed to us are, are high, you know, huge amounts, PAL owners and PAL holders, they don’t, they don’t tend to scam people, otherwise they wouldn’t be PAL holders for  very long. The people who are placing the ads are all CSSA members. You have to be a member to place an ad.

Travis Bader: [00:47:32] Right.

Tony Bernardo: [00:47:33] You don’t have to be a member to buy something, but you have to be a member to post them. So, you know, the people who are posting it are above board. The people who are buying it are above board. We’ve never had an incident, not one.

Travis Bader: [00:47:45] That’s fantastic.

Tony Bernardo: [00:47:46] Yeah. It’s a great system. It’s a great system. We, we try very hard to make sure that it’s easy to use and effective. But there’s lots of benefits and not the least of which is you know, free, legal advice.

Travis Bader: [00:47:59] Yeah, that’s quite helpful. So you’ve got lawyers on retainer that are able to give out that free advice. And I guess some of it’s probably going to be boiler plate cause the same questions come up.

Tony Bernardo: [00:48:09] Absolutely. The same questions coming up for the last 25 years, you know?

Travis Bader: [00:48:13] Yeah.

Tony Bernardo: [00:48:13] So, you know, most of the questions we don’t need to refer to a lawyer because we’ve already got the answers.

Travis Bader: [00:48:19] Right.

Tony Bernardo: [00:48:19] Yeah, we’ve dealt with most of these questions a thousand times. One of the biggest ones we get is what happens to people who inherit Estates.

Travis Bader: [00:48:28] Right. Okay. Then that’s one of the biggest questions.

Tony Bernardo: [00:48:31] Yeah. That’s one of the biggest ones we get, like every week. Somebody is calling about what do we do? How do we deal with us? And I mean, this has been so boiler plate for us. We’ve given out the advice like thousands of times and so we know exactly, contact this person, contact this person, do this, do that, you know, and here’s what you’ll need for this.

[00:48:53] And, you know, things like that right. Yeah, it’s good. We perform a very valuable service to gun owners. In fact, many of the services performed are ones that are damn government should be performing.

Travis Bader: [00:49:05] Uh huh, tell me about that one.

Tony Bernardo: [00:49:08] Right. But you know, they, they keep the, the gun owning public in the dark. They’re still keeping the gun owning public in the dark. The order in council contains some enormous nastiness in there. And we’ve tried to make people aware of, of the things that are in there. That there’s two provisions in the order of council that people should know about. One of which is that the order in council prohibits any firearm, any firearm was a board diameter of 20 millimetre or greater.

Travis Bader: [00:49:45] Right.

Tony Bernardo: [00:49:47] All right. So every single 12 gauge shotgun that has a removable choke is over 20 millimetres in bore.

Travis Bader: [00:49:57] Isn’t it interesting that they can try and backpedal and say, Oh, but not that.

Tony Bernardo: [00:50:02] Yeah. Well, when we asked them to backpedal and say, Oh, but not that. They came up with some cockamamie BS measuring system that the RCMP invented on the fly that morning. And they put it up on a Facebook page and Bill Blair put out a retweet saying, Oh yeah, but, but not that. And all of a sudden an RCMP Facebook page, they wrote on the fly that morning. And Bill Blair’s tweet somehow manages to contradict criminal code law.

Travis Bader: [00:50:36] Yeah.

Tony Bernardo: [00:50:39] But you know gun owners are optimistic lot and you know, they, they looked at well the minister says it doesn’t mean shotguns. Well, you know what, if it doesn’t mean shotguns, we said to the minister, can you put two little words in the order in council except shotguns? 20 millimetre bore or larger, except shotguns.

[00:51:05] Travis Bader: [00:51:05] That would be easy.

Tony Bernardo: [00:51:06] It sure is. You can even say except 12 and 10 gauge shotguns. And they refuse to do that. What does that tell you Travis?

Travis Bader: [00:51:16] There’s a reason why. You know, there’s one firearms officer, I remember this one. I don’t know if I should tell this story, but I’m going to. Normative process, I think is what he called it. Have you heard of this?

Tony Bernardo: [00:51:30] No, go ahead.

Travis Bader: [00:51:31] Okay, so we were having a business inspection and for years the firearms program was having difficulties coming up with an, a palatable  decision on what the classification of some firearms are. So we’ve got active firearms, they go bang, we’ve got deactivated firearms, you have disabled firearms, we have destroyed firearms. These are all things that the firearm centre has come up and said, or the firearms program as they like to be called has come up and said, these have different classifications of firearms. So our active firearm is registered and has, carries a weight of law behind it.

[00:52:13] Your disabled firearm, and this is something that safety course instructors across the country will use. They’ve got the chambers milled out, they’ve got firing pin holes, drilled out central pieces destroyed and removed. And they said, well, it doesn’t meet our classification for deactivation, which is a guideline at best. So we’ll call it disabled, and the carries with it, the same weight as these active firearms.

[00:52:41] So we’ve got a bunch of these firearms and some of them were purchased before a certain date, some were after and on their website they have this nice little article and it says any firearms that were considered inert, deactivated before this date, they stay that way, unless of course we can deem it otherwise.

[00:52:59] And anything, one after that is going to have to meet these new guidelines. So I was confused. I said, I’ve got these two firearms, they’re identical to each other in every single way. One, we got prior to that date, one we got out after that date. The chambers are milled out, the slide rails are destroyed on the things. I mean, they’re, they’re really butchered up. And I said, you guys tell me, if you want to have it registered, go ahead. You’ve got the information registered. If you want it, call it as a deactivated as you have in the past, fair enough, you tell me and they wouldn’t.

[00:53:38] Rather, they wanted to push that onto me and they say, you have to, to make that decision and you have to go ahead and I’m sitting here thinking like, I mean, you’ve got the information, you’ve got the serial numbers, make, model, everything else. It’s simple. If it’s gotta be registered, register it. So I was getting a little bit concerned about the process and I contacted our MP at the time.

[00:53:59] And local MP was Carrie Lynn Findley, and she calls up a minister Blaney, I talk with minister Blaney they say huh, it is a bit of a head scratcher. Tell you what, tell them, we’re discussing this at the ministerial level. We’ll come back, we’ll let them know right. We’ll, we’ll see, kind of what’s going on.

[00:54:19] So I presented all the information, they still were scratching their heads, firearms officer comes in and I explained that to them and he turns at me and he says, and I’m quoting him, fuck Carrie Lynn Findley, fuck minister Blaney, they don’t make the laws, we do.

[00:54:40] And I said, excuse me? And he repeated himself and he said, I, so how does that work? Right. And he says, well it’s through a process is called a normative factors from normative process. Essentially, if we do things in a certain way, for a long enough time, the courts will turn around and they’ll lean on that and they’ll say, this is how it’s done, it’s commonly accepted.

[00:55:05] So essentially we make the laws. Oh, okay, fair enough. I mean, I run a security related business. We have cameras all through here, so it didn’t take long for minister Blaney to have a copy of that. And it also didn’t take long for that firearms officer to be pulled from our account and a nice apology letter to be coming through.

[00:55:24] But I think, I don’t think that firearms officer was necessarily speaking on his own behalf. And I think perhaps he spoke with other firearms officers about this normative process. And that might be a common tactic that’s used. Tell you what we will interpret things as we think is fit, whether it’s right or whether it’s wrong, whether it’s for the end, with best intentions in mind or the most nefarious intentions.

[00:55:52] And after a certain amount of time, that just becomes how it’s done. And that might be what’s happening here with this whole, like how hard would it be to put in except 12 and 10 gauge or except shotguns?

Tony Bernardo: [00:56:06] It’s easy as pie. The thing is, is that the normative process thing you’re talking about, always works only to their advantage. It never works to yours.

Travis Bader: [00:56:16] Sure.

Tony Bernardo: [00:56:17] Right. Because if, they’ll come up with a new normative process on the blink of an eye, if they think they’re going to do something to you.

Travis Bader: [00:56:24] That’s right.

Tony Bernardo: [00:56:25] Right. Like, for example, the RCMP creating a whole new measurement system out of thin air. You know, you can go onto the FRT and I know you have access to the FRT. You can go on the FRT and you go into the definitions section of the FRT and you look up the definition of bore. And it even has a picture, it says the interior portion of the barrel, from the end of the chamber to the muzzle.

Travis Bader: [00:56:54] That’s right.

Tony Bernardo: [00:56:56] Hmmm.

Travis Bader: [00:56:57] That makes it, it makes it simple.

Tony Bernardo: [00:56:59] It makes it simple. And CBSA uses the exact same definition, we have in writing from them. We also have it in writing from them that if you are coming back into Canada with a 12 gauge shotgun with chokes, you run the risk of having your firearm ceased.

Travis Bader: [00:57:17] Interesting.

Tony Bernardo: [00:57:18] Yes. Now the second part of the, of the order in council that is so dangerous is this section called the 10,000 joules of energy.

Travis Bader: [00:57:29] Right.

Tony Bernardo: [00:57:29] It’s dangerous because they use language from the previous Hasselwander decision from 30 years ago, what it says is capable of one of the big things on the Hasselwander decision was the definition of what capable means.

Travis Bader: [00:57:49] Right.

Tony Bernardo: [00:57:50] And Hasselwander has been used by the way, 241 times as precedent case law in Canada. It’s now a long standing, old case law, guaranteed to pass the test in court. And what Hasselwander said about capable was that the word capable had no qualifier. Capable meant capable. It doesn’t mean capable of doing it safely. It doesn’t mean capable of doing it twice, it means capable. Now we know that the firearm itself per se, is the receiver of the gun. Right.

Travis Bader: [00:58:31] Right.

Tony Bernardo: [00:58:32] Right. The barrel is a part, right?

Travis Bader: [00:58:35] Correct.

Tony Bernardo: [00:58:36] Right. You can take a regular bolt action rifle, you could unscrew the barrel that’s on it, you can change the bolt face. You can screw on a 460 weatherby barrel, the 460 weatherby won’t work through the action, of course, because it’s too big, but you can take the bolt out of the back. You can slide one cartridge up through the bolt race, put the bolt back in and fire it. And you just prohibited every single Remington model 700 in all of Canada instantly because it is capable of. It doesn’t matter if the rifle blew apart.

Travis Bader: [00:59:23] Well, didn’t we have a guy on YouTube just do this with a shotgun.

Tony Bernardo: [00:59:26] Well, now the shotgun thing, that 10,000 joules of energy, we put out that video of a guy firing a 12 gauge shotgun. That’s a pretty standard looking shotgun. But the casing he was using was different. Now it’s a 12 gauge shotgun, but he was using a cutdown 50 BMG case. Cause I know this will astound you, but they fit.

Travis Bader: [00:59:50] Yep.

Tony Bernardo: [00:59:52] Okay, the 50 BMG case head will fit into a 12 gauge perfectly.

Travis Bader: [00:59:57] Yep.

Tony Bernardo: [00:59:58] And he cut down and reamed out a very very thick brass 50 BMG case, put a 650 grain heeled bullet and fired it over a chronograph. Now it was in, in, in kinetic energy, foot pounds.

Travis Bader: [01:00:17] Okay.

Tony Bernardo: [01:00:17] But 10,000  joules is 7,370 something foot pounds. He broke 7,500 foot pounds with a 12 gauge shotgun.

Travis Bader: [01:00:28] Right.

Tony Bernardo: [01:00:29] Holding it in his arms, not tying it to a tree. Okay. He held it in the yard and you could shoot it again.

Travis Bader: [01:00:38] That’s right.

Tony Bernardo: [01:00:39] Yeah. I mean, I imagine the recoil knocked into next month, but I mean.

Travis Bader: [01:00:45] Have some bruising for sure.

Tony Bernardo: [01:00:46] Oh, yeah, maybe a dislocated shoulder, but that doesn’t matter. What matters is the Hasselwander world, word of capable, capable as capable as capable.

Travis Bader: [01:00:56] So it kind of lands us in a bit of a world of hurt here because we’re at the discretion of the regulators, the RCMP in this case, to essentially tell us what they feel the law means. And then we kind of have to live by that as opposed to reading the law and interpreting it for what it is.

Tony Bernardo: [01:01:19] If we haven’t learned the lesson of RCMP re-interpretation by now, when the hell are we ever going to learn it? The RCMP I’ve never had a single solitary law that they haven’t eventually used against us have they?

Travis Bader: [01:01:35] Not that I can think of.

Tony Bernardo: [01:01:37] Right. Exactly. And they’re going to use these against us too when the time is right. So this, this is dangerous. People have got to understand how dangerous this is. Okay. They can ban virtually every centerfire bolt action rifle in Canada in a sweep of a pen.

Travis Bader: [01:01:57] Well, essentially they already have, we just have to know, interpreted that way.

Tony Bernardo: [01:02:01] Exactly, exactly. Exactly. All those, those 12 gauges with removable chokes, you know, Elwood Epps, you know, very respected firearms store. They put out a video measuring an old Iver Johnson, 12 gauge farm gun. Single shot break open farm gun. And the interior of the barrel measured 20.5 millimetres. While they were filming, they phoned the firearm centre, here’s the measurements we just got. Is this done prohibited? Yes, it is.

Travis Bader: [01:02:39] There you go.

Tony Bernardo: [01:02:40] There you go. There you go. So it’s just a matter of time before they go ahead and use this now, you know, that they also created a very very dangerous work hazard in this as well. And most of the gunnies didn’t pick up on this because it doesn’t directly affect them, but there is a firearm out there called an 8 gauge blasting gun.

Travis Bader: [01:03:03] Right.

Tony Bernardo: [01:03:04] And the 8 gauge blasting gub is used by all the road crews that work in Canada that are doing demolition work, explosives work. And, it is a critical safety tool for them and it is considered to be a firearm. But what it does is when they blow a rock face, before the go in and queen fallen rock off, away from the rock face, there are big chunks of rock that are just hanging there that didn’t blow off in the initial blast.

Travis Bader: [01:03:32] Mhmm.

Tony Bernardo: [01:03:33] They bring out this 8 gauge  blasting gun, it fire’s a 2,500 grain projectile off of a tripod, but it’s basically, it’s a single shot shotgun.

Travis Bader: [01:03:43] Mhmm.

Tony Bernardo: [01:03:44] And the wranglers that use these guns have to have firearms licenses. They have to be stored and transported us firearms and they are firearms. But what they do is they blow these chunks of rock off the rock face so that the men can safely work down there.

Travis Bader: [01:04:01] But they’re now prohibited.

Tony Bernardo: [01:04:03] Right. How crazy eh?

Travis Bader: [01:04:08] Tell. So the OIC comes through, they say, all these guns, they’re now bad, prohibited. You got two years, but these guys are prohibited. But since then, that list has grown hasn’t it?

Tony Bernardo: [01:04:21] 450 guns.

Travis Bader: [01:04:23] We’re at 450 now?

Tony Bernardo: [01:04:25] In secret.

Travis Bader: [01:04:26] So, how does that work?

Tony Bernardo: [01:04:28] They’re put down as being variants. Okay. They’re variants of the existing prohibitions. And you can only imagine that some of the variations of these variants are wildly imagined.

Travis Bader: [01:04:45] I think this goes full circle to what we’re talking to the very beginning on variants.

Tony Bernardo: [01:04:50] Exactly. Exactly. The RCMP has this wishlist, the feds have their list and the RCMP just, just morphs their wishlist to fit whatever they think they want to put as a variant and they’re never challenged. They’re never, ever challenged by the liberals because as you know, Ralph Goodall said, we’re going to let the RCMP make classifications. I even have MP’s to this day ask me, where in the Firearms Act or in their bill, C-71 does it say, where’s the section that says the RCMP gets to make the classifications?

Travis Bader: [01:05:24] Yeah, that’s absolutely mind blowing.

Tony Bernardo: [01:05:27] It doesn’t say that.

Travis Bader: [01:05:30] Absolutely. If the police, if the police have special knowledge, if they’ve got special training and they’ve got the ability to interpret things in a way that’s going to be useful. Use them as a reference, use them for guidance, by all means. But to put the powers of, and decision making powers for creating the laws in the same hands of the people who are in charge of enforcing them is very, very scary.

Tony Bernardo: [01:05:58] Do you know what they call that don’t ya?

Travis Bader: [01:06:00] I sure do.

Tony Bernardo: [01:06:02] Yeah, for the purposes of your listeners. That’s called a police state.

Travis Bader: [01:06:08] That’s right.

Tony Bernardo: [01:06:09] The people who enforce the law and make the law. That’s a very scary place to be. Democracies don’t run that way.

Travis Bader: [01:06:17] No. And you know, it’s a sort of a camel, camel in the tent sort of thing, and maybe it goes back to this normative process as well.

Tony Bernardo: [01:06:26] Yeah and maybe it does, you know, the RCMP have been doing this, but you know, there’s nothing in the Firearms Act anywhere that gives the RCMP authority to do this.

Travis Bader: [01:06:38] Mhmm.

Tony Bernardo: [01:06:39] They assumed the authority by the creation of the FRT, which also doesn’t exist anywhere in legislation. The FRT is an internal catalog of guns that the RCMP created out of a huge budget, that they, money they stole from us and, they made this change.

Travis Bader: [01:06:57] Oh, but they’re going to sell it. They’re going to sell it to other countries. You remember that story?

Tony Bernardo: [01:07:02] No, no. They do sell it.

Travis Bader: [01:07:04] Oh sure, but how much money do they make from that?

Tony Bernardo: [01:07:06] Well, I don’t know, but certainly not very much, but.

Travis Bader: [01:07:09] I don’t think it of-sets the cost.

Tony Bernardo: [01:07:11] Oh my goodness no, but what it does allows, it allows the RCMP firearms lab to be the world’s authority.

Travis Bader: [01:07:18] That’s right.

Tony Bernardo: [01:07:19] And I guess they probably are right at this particular moment in terms of firearms anyway. And, the FRT somehow managed to gain its weight in law. But it has no legal basis. It’s simply the opinion of a technician.

Travis Bader: [01:07:38] That’s right. Scary.

Tony Bernardo: [01:07:40] So anyway, we have long advocated to various governments for the creation of an evaluation committee. The, the work that this evaluation committee would not have to do, it’s not, it’s not very big. Because most firearms come into the country and their classification is self evident. It’s a bolt action 22, guess what? It’s non-restricted.

Travis Bader: [01:08:04] Yeah.

Tony Bernardo: [01:08:05] Yeah. It’s, it’s pretty simple, most of them were pretty simple. But the ones that are contentious would go in front of this committee of bonified experts on which RCMP would be one. So would the Ontario Forensic Centre, they’ve got some incredible people working for them on this stuff, but there are people within the civilian industry. And of course, you know who most of them are too, that are every bit as knowledgeable and talented as anybody that the feds have got and they don’t carry government baggage.

Travis Bader: [01:08:39] Mhmm.

Tony Bernardo: [01:08:40] So you can create a committee that’s five or seven people, including your government people.

Travis Bader: [01:08:46] Sure.

Tony Bernardo: [01:08:48] You take the facilities of the RCMP firearms lab and you put them at the disposal of the committee for the purposes of evaluation of firearms, and now you can come up with classifications that all of us can respect.

Travis Bader: [01:09:01] Hopefully, hopefully.

Tony Bernardo: [01:09:03] Yeah. So there’s lots of things. Lots of work to do still, you know,  we’ve we will get rid of this order in council, when we change government. You know, and,  you know, as long as the river doesn’t rise and everything stays the same, we should be able to get rid of the existing Trudeau government, long as he keeps giving money to his mom, you know, our money.

Travis Bader: [01:09:30] Yeah. Yeah.

Tony Bernardo: [01:09:30] I need to work out this deal cause I have to get some money for my mom. Can I get the government to give me some money for my mom.

Travis Bader: [01:09:37] Yeah. Wouldn’t that be nice eh?

Tony Bernardo: [01:09:38] It would be, it would be. I like my mom. We, we, we will turn this over eventually. Okay. People gotta be patient cause it’s not going to happen today. They’re not even going to get a court date until the new year. For any of these cases, you know, the 117.15 Judicial  challenge is a much simpler, there, they’re much easier to expedite and we think they have a way higher chance of success.

Travis Bader: [01:10:08] Okay.

Tony Bernardo: [01:10:09] There are some, some larger court cases going out there right now that are going to take years to come to fruition. And unbelievable amounts of money and, and quite frankly, in my opinion, the odds of them succeeding are smaller.

Travis Bader: [01:10:27] Mhmm.

Tony Bernardo: [01:10:28] But 117.15, I think is where the gold is because we can prove the minister’s opinion is stupid.

Travis Bader: [01:10:35] You know, and I mentioned that, on a podcast previously that I do, I agree with you. I think that’s sort of the path that needs to be gone down because legitimate sporting purposes is kinda difficult to argue.

Tony Bernardo: [01:10:47] Right. Especially when you’ve been giving people ATTs and the, and the MNR’s all over the country and the letting people hunt with guns like this, and they’ve been successfully harvesting game animals with them. How do you argue that logic?

Travis Bader: [01:11:01] Very difficultly. Mind you, I remember, there was one case that I was assisting with and was the subject matter expert on a, on a court case. And it was interesting because we go through the whole process and essentially the big learning point at the end, and I would have thought that it should have been maybe evident prior to this, but it really didn’t matter what one side or the other side said. It really didn’t matter what I said as an expert on it, because everything that I said, I knew to be true, I’ve done my research.

[01:11:42] I got to sit in and listen to the other side say their piece. And I thought, how the heck can they say that and keep a straight face. But really it didn’t matter, if the process was followed. Step one, step two, step three and the government came to an erroneous conclusion, but the process was followed properly, the erroneous conclusion stands, is a sense of what the judge said at the end.

[01:12:10] So no matter how we tried to point out that the points that they were making were false and it was based on flawed logic and based on, on, on the wrong information, if they follow the right process to get there and they just happen to get to a contrary conclusion, that conclusion stands. So that was kind of surprising for me.

Tony Bernardo: [01:12:34] Yeah, I, those are the kinds of things that I think surprised everybody when they get into the court process. You know, you, you and I have both been doing the court process for a long time. As a matter of fact, we should, we should also mention we’ve been on opposite sides of the same court case.

Travis Bader: [01:12:48] That’s right, we were. Actually, I’m working on one right now and I was called up by one side and not a problem. Start off and they said, Oh no, we changed our mind, we don’t want to proceed. Bout a week later, the other side phones up. I said, Hey, just so you know, I’ve been dealing with the, with the other side on it. And, I just want to make sure there’s no conflict. I’ve got no problem going in and just speaking the truth, being an advocate for the court.

Tony Bernardo: [01:13:15] That’s it. I do this on a regular basis like you do, you know, and you go in there and you do your best to bring illumination to dark subjects.

Travis Bader: [01:13:27] Agreed.

Tony Bernardo: [01:13:27] And yeah. And you do your best. And, like I said, it was fun to having you on the opposite side of the, the, the case, but we resolved it with good nature and gentlemanly behaviour.

Travis Bader: [01:13:41] Well, absolutely peace and harmony prevailed.

Tony Bernardo: [01:13:44] Peace and harmony prevails. That’s wonderful. But, and they settled.

Travis Bader: [01:13:50] Yes, that’s exactly.

Tony Bernardo: [01:13:54] Anyway so the, th, this order in council, there’s so much danger that the actual list of guns that they banned, I don’t think is nearly as dangerous as the potential of what they could have been.

Travis Bader: [01:14:09] That’s my impression as well.

Tony Bernardo: [01:14:12] Yeah. And the, the people who wrote this are diabolically clever, it’s fashionable within our community to portray these people as stupid, they’re not stupid.

Travis Bader: [01:14:24] They’re not stupid.

Tony Bernardo: [01:14:25] They appear stupid.

Travis Bader: [01:14:27] Yeah. No, they’re not, they’re not stupid at all. Not by any stretch of the imagination.

Tony Bernardo: [01:14:32] Right .And neither are our enemies, you know, Wendy Cukier. I don’t know if you’ve ever done a couple of laps in the ring with her, but, Wendy Cukier is a very, very smart person. Very well informed on firearms issues and in fact, I really found that in spades, when I started working in the United Nations in 1998.

Travis Bader: [01:14:57] Okay.

Tony Bernardo: [01:14:57] On gun, on gun issues. I know that because I got my ID badges all the way back to 1998. And at that time, Wendy Cukier and Emery Smith were both very active in the UN context and it was really illuminating to see them in action. They really truly are not stupid people. Evil, maybe, but not stupid.

Travis Bader: [01:15:21] Agenda driven.

Tony Bernardo: [01:15:22] Yep. So, you know, we, we need to get people to recognize you know, your viewers to recognize that there is a lot more in this order in council, they’ve got to fight this order in council. The most effective way they can do it is get this Trudeau government, the hell out office. You know, we, we, we have, we have our leadership convention coming up for the conservative party. Don’t misunderstand me. I’m not a shill  for the conservative party, by any stretch of the imagination, but they’re the ones who support the firearms agenda for us.

Travis Bader: [01:15:56] Right.

Tony Bernardo: [01:15:57] So we have to recognize that right now, they’re the only game in town. We are going to have some bad blood because we’ve got some gunnies that support different candidates and whoever wins best, we have to get behind.

Travis Bader: [01:16:13] Right.

Tony Bernardo: [01:16:14] Because the worst conservative candidate they got is infinitely better than Justin Trudeau.

Travis Bader: [01:16:19] Agreed.

Tony Bernardo: [01:16:21] Yeah. We got to win this next election. That’s going to come sooner than later I think. You know,  I think when you and I were talking in January,  that the, at that reception, I think that  we talked about the fact then that I believe that Trudeau was gonna bail early. And I still think that, I still think that might be eminent right now for him it’s a great way to get out of this WE mess.

Travis Bader: [01:16:50] Yeah.

Tony Bernardo: [01:16:50] You know, he’s got all the money socked away for his mom.

Travis Bader: [01:16:57] Oh man. Well, we’ve definitely touched on the OIC. I think we’ve gotten some of the bigger broad brush strokes out there.

Tony Bernardo: [01:17:06] Yeah.

Travis Bader: [01:17:06] I think the audience, if they have further questions on it, I mean, call the CSSA and look at their website. Look at joining. You guys have been the longest standing largest organization fighting for firearms rights for Canadians for a very, very long time. Is there anything else we should talk about before we wrap up here?

Tony Bernardo: [01:17:29] Well I, I think we should recognize that not everyone in government is our enemy.

Travis Bader: [01:17:35] Mhmm.

Tony Bernardo: [01:17:36] You know, we have a tool in the government called the Parliamentary Outdoors Caucus Association. It’s the largest nonpartisan caucus on Parliament Hill. It consists of members from every political party. They have to have a common interest in the mandate of the outdoors caucus, which is angling, hunting, sports shooting, trapping.

Travis Bader: [01:18:05] Okay.

Tony Bernardo: [01:18:06] And the co-chair is a liberal and a very nice lady. There’s several liberals that are in that caucus that support our goals, not everybody’s our enemy. And you know, they, they have to tow the party line when the whip comes around. But that doesn’t mean they’re not fighting on our behalf in the background.

Travis Bader: [01:18:29] Mhmm.

Tony Bernardo: [01:18:30] So people got to remember that there’s no such thing as any political parties that’s total evil or totally good. There are conservatives that do not support our goals and aims, but fortunately they’re few and far between.

Travis Bader: [01:18:48] No, I’m glad you brought that up too cause it’s really, really easy to paint the opposition as the enemy. And that’s one of the silliest things you can do if you really want to try and understand if the person is your enemy, understand them, get in their head, think of where they’re coming from. When one thing I’ve found, cause people say, well, are these guys terrible?

[01:19:09] Isn’t this group terrible and I, from years of experience, no, I think people are lazy in general. You’re going to have a handful of people out there that are terrible. You’re going to have a handful of people out there that are really, really good. But the majority are just going to go the easy path. We’re all animals.

[01:19:30] It’s like game animals, that’s why we have game trails, like, like to go down the easy path, right. And a few terrible people will do something, a few good people will really shine, but most of them will just go with whatever’s easy. And when something like this comes through and you’re dealing with different politicians or you’re dealing with the RCMP on it, They’re civil servants, they go home at the end of the day, they try their best not to bring any of this baggage home with them. And what’s easy? I know just toe the line, so it’s.

Tony Bernardo: [01:20:01] And you know, many of the civil servants are also extremely motivated politically.

Travis Bader: [01:20:09] Oh very much so.

Tony Bernardo: [01:20:11] The left has infiltrated the, the civil service to a point where sometimes it’s difficult to see the forest or the trees.

Travis Bader: [01:20:19] Thank you very much for giving me your time. I really appreciate you speaking to me and speaking to the listeners and helping educate us on this very important matter. Thank you, Tony.

Tony Bernardo: [01:20:29] Oh, my pleasure, Travis. And anytime we can do it again and you know, if it, if it helps people understand the situation that we’re in, then that’s great, I’m happy to do it.