Gary Anandasangaree’s leaked gun buyback comments have landed him in hot water. Will Mark Carney continue to back his embattled minister?

The Conservatives are accusing him of having been “caught telling the truth about the failed Liberal buyback boondoggle while breaching basic ethics.”

How Prime Minister Mark Carney responds will set the bar for what’s acceptable behaviour from cabinet ministers, colour his relationship with his caucus, and telegraph to the Conservative opposition how far they should push when they have a minister on the ropes. 

In a leaked audio recording, obtained by the Star’s Mark Ramzy, Anandasangaree seemed to suggest that he doesn’t support the Liberals’ gun buyback program — a major platform commitment he is charged with defending.

“If I were to redo this,” says Anandasangaree to his tenant, “like from scratch, I would have a very different approach.” The Star agreed not to identify the tenant because he feared repercussions for sharing the audio.

He goes on to say that the government is pressing ahead because the program is important to Liberal voters in Quebec. Quebecers, the minister later told the Star, are generally more favourable to the buyback program because three mass shootings in Montreal and Quebec City shocked the collective conscience of the province.

But these are not only controversial comments made by Anandasangaree, a beloved MP, described by colleagues as kind, calm, someone who wears his heart on his sleeve and truly cares about people.

In the recording, Anandasangaree acknowledges the tenant will “probably” lose money from the program, as government compensation won’t reflect the exact value of his SIG or AR-15s. “Whatever your loss is, you tell me, I’ll personally compensate you.” 

When the tenant tells Anandasangaree he’ll refuse to hand in his firearms, the minister replies: “I will come and bail you out if that happens. You call me.” 

“I’m going to have a criminal record, which means I’m going to lose my job,” the tenant says.

The minister assures him “it’s not going to go that far, let’s be frank,” adding: “I just don’t think municipal police services have the resources to do this.” 

But if the public safety minister doesn’t believe police have the resources to enforce the law, why push ahead with the program?

The Assault-Style Firearms Compensation Program (ASFCP) was introduced in 2020 by Justin Trudeau’s government. Some 2,500 makes and models of assault-style firearms can now no longer be legally possessed, sold, or imported into Canada. But an amnesty order protects firearm owners from criminal liability until Oct. 30.

Tuesday, in a phone interview, Anandasangaree said his comments about bailing out his tenant and topping up his compensation were made “in jest,” and “That was not a serious comment.” 

“I should not have said (that), and it’s been misinterpreted as if it was a serious offer,” he said. “What comes across in person and what comes across on tape are two different things. I said it, like … more of a joke … My sense is he would comply, and that’s kind of how I approached the conversation, because he’s always been a law-abiding citizen.” 

It’s also why, Anandasangaree said, he didn’t think the tenant would be charged by the police.

“The police have to do their job,” he asserted. 

If it was up to him, he told the Star, he would have rolled out the program faster. “It should not have taken this long because it has frustrated a lot of survivors, like Nathalie (Provost, a victim of Montreal’s 1989 École Polytechnique shooting, and now the Liberals’ secretary of state for nature).” And there should also have been more of an education campaign around it, he said.

“I believe in this buyback program. I think this is the best-case scenario.” The resources are already allocated, there is general consensus on the list of dangerous weapons to remove from the streets, and, Anandasangaree said, the timing is right with a “massive increase in hate across Canada.”

“This is not a panacea. This is not going to solve all of our issues, but it is part of a broader solution including bail reform … criminal justice reform … and additional investments at the border,” he said. Policies that are coming.

The opposition smells blood. Tuesday, the Conservatives 31 times called for Anandasangaree to be fired. 

His comments poke holes in a prized Liberal policy — one the Conservatives love to fundraise on. He appears to confirm everything they believe is wrong with the program: it is expensive, will divert money away from front-line police services, won’t be implemented, won’t address illegal guns, and was enacted only for political purposes.

In the Commons, things got so heated that Anandasangaree, at one point, urged Brantford-area Conservative MP Larry Brock to repeat his comments outside the chamber, suggesting he would sue him for defamation.

So far, Carney is standing by his public safety minister. “I have confidence in the minster. He is doing important work,” the prime minister said from New York.

But Carney also stood by former Liberal MP Paul Chiang during the election campaign after he made deeply offensive comments joking about a Chinese bounty on a Conservative opponent’s head.

One day after Carney called Chiang “a person of integrity,” he was no longer a candidate.