Canada bans .22 rifle because it looks similar to an AK-47

[iverglas]

21. the description in #10

refers to a 20-round magazine. Those are prohibited in Canada. I imagine the thing takes smaller magazines, but thought I'd point that out.

If you read the regulations, you will notice under

PART 2
RESTRICTED FIREARMS

that AR-15s are restricted, for instance (available only to licensed sports shooters and collectors with restricted firearms licenses).

I'm sure you'll be shocked and appalled at all sorts of things there.

Efforts to date to have the Ruger Mini-14 included in that list have been unsuccessful.


I'll reproduce a bit of the decision of the Court of Appeal that I had linked to (since no one is likely to look at it), for the benefit of anyone in the interested reading public.

34 The Act obliges the provincial court to hear all relevant evidence presented by both the applicant and the Registrar. It is clear that the provincial court is to engage in its own fact finding process. That is why it is described as a reference and not an appeal from the Registrar’s decision. Nor is it a hearing de novo, since the Registrar has not held a hearing. Clearly the legislative intent is that the provincial court is to find its own facts and need give no deference to any facts recited in the reasons of the Registrar.

35 However, having done that, s. 75(3) of the Act directs the provincial court to decide, in light of the facts it has found, if the applicant has satisfied it that the Registrar’s refusal was “not justified”. That is, the applicant must do more than show that, given the facts found, the decision was wrong. Rather, the provincial court must be satisfied that the refusal was not justified. In my view this reflects the legislative intent that the provincial court accord deference to the Registrar’s decision. I say this for several reasons.

36 The first is the particular language of the Act. The pertinent definition of “justification” in Black’s Law Dictionary, 8th ed., is “a lawful or sufficient reason for one’s acts or omissions.” That is, a decision is not justified if there is no sufficient reason for it. As well, the Supreme Court of Canada has linked the deferential standard of reasonableness to the concept of justification. In Dunsmuir v. New Brunswick, 2008 SCC 9 (CanLII), 2008 SCC 9, [2008] 1 S.C.R. 190 at para. 47, the court describes the qualities that make a decision reasonable and makes clear that justification is a key aspect of reasonableness. Thus I think the language of s. 75(3) of the Act directs the provincial court to apply a deferential standard of review to the Registrar’s decision itself. The provincial court is to test that decision against the facts it has found. It is not to determine if it agrees with the decision, but whether it has been satisfied by the applicant that the decision is not reasonably defenceable. This mandates deference.

37 A deferential approach is also supported by the undoubted specialized expertise of the Registrar in administering the complex firearms registration regime. That regime encompasses both the legislation and the relevant subordinate legislation, including S.O.R./98-462. In addition, the nature of the questions of law that arise for the Registrar is compatible with a standard of deference. As in this case, where the question is the meaning of “variant” in the relevant Order in Council, these questions are within a very specialized area of the legal system and have limited general application.

38 In my view, the deferential standard of review to be applied by the provincial court to the Registrar’s refusal is best described as one of reasonableness. That notion is well known in judicial review of administrative decisions, and that is, of course, what is going on here. A new label would simply complicate an area of law which the Supreme Court in Dunsmuir has said should be simplified. The provincial court’s task is not to assess the process used by the Registrar about which it may know very little. Rather it is to evaluate the Registrar’s decision in the context of the facts it has found to decide if the applicant has satisfied it that the decision does not fall “within a range of possible, acceptable outcomes which are defenceable in respect of the facts and law”: Dunsmuir, at para. 47. It is in this sense that the provincial court should apply a standard of reasonableness.

39 Turning to this case, I agree with the Superior Court that the Ontario Court of Justice did not apply this standard of review to the Registrar’s refusal. It concluded that the applicant’s firearm, the AP80, could not be a variant of the AK-47 because it was a semi-automatic weapon, not an automatic one. The court did not evaluate whether, in light of the fact that the AP80 is the same weapon as the AK-22 (which is expressly declared by the regulation to be a variant of the AK-47), the decision that the AP80 is a variant of the AK-47 is within the range of defenceable outcomes. In my view, had the Ontario Court of Justice done so, it would have confirmed the Registrar’s decision.

(Not the best reasons I've ever read - "defenceable"?? (and I absolutely despise the use of the word "regime" in place of the good English word "scheme", now replaced by reverse franglais in Canada and at the international level) ... Dunsmuir is the gold standard for judicial review of administrative decisions, and I'd have to delve into whether it's being properly applied here ... nor is the legislation itself maybe the most perfectly drafted -- but I'd have to do more research, including into the very particular subject of these kinds of cases, which I suspect are scarce as hen's teeth, before I could pass further judgment on it.