Firearms flooded into Canada after Stephen Harper’s Conservative government dismantled the federal long gun registry in 2012 — nearly two million rifles, shotguns and handguns were imported for retail sale across the country over just five years, federal records show.

The surge of firearms, with a total import value of $751 million, rose 79 per cent over the number of firearm imports from the start of 2007 to the end of 2011, customs information held by Statistics Canada reveals.

The data going back to 1988 show that even by 2007, firearm imports that were growing steadily after a steep dive when the Liberal government implemented the long-gun registry in 1995 began to increase sharply after Harper and his Conservatives won their second minority government in 2008.

Rifle imports jumped from 89,088 in 2007 to 116,318 in 2008, and although they eased to just over 108,000 in 2009 and 2010, rifle imports spiked to more than 140,000 in 2011 — the year the May 2 federal election delivered the Conservatives a majority.

Rifle imports kept increasing, peaking at 291,356 in 2014.

An unspecified mix of non-restricted firearms, such as shotguns for duck hunting or long guns for shooting big game — and restricted versions of semi-automatic rifles that are legally limited to owners’ dwellings or licensed ranges — dominated the imports throughout the periods.

From 2012 through 2016, 1,080,250 rifles were imported into Canada — 91 per cent more than the 565,177 rifles that went through customs from Jan. 1, 2007 through to Dec. 31, 2011, the data show.

The United States was the import source for just over 50 per cent of all the categories of firearms coming in from other countries.

Shotgun imports through 2012 to the end of 2016 totalled 529,118, up 55 per cent over shotgun imports through the five years prior to the end of the long-gun registry.

Handguns accounted for the smallest share of imported firearms, save for muzzleloader hunting rifles — but saw the largest spike in imports.

Though registration requirements remained for handguns and restricted rifles after the Conservatives dismantled the long gun registry, imports of revolvers and pistols jumped by 86 per cent during the five-year period from 2012 through 2016 — with total imports at 291,373 for that period, compared to 155,917 imported handguns from Jan. 1, 2007, through Dec. 31, 2011.

Combined, the rifle, shotgun and handgun imports totalled 1.9 million during the five years 2012 through 2016, compared to 1.06 million imports of the same categories of firearms from the five years 2012 through 2016.

Records in the federal registry for restricted and prohibited firearms reflect a similar increase in business and individual registrations for handguns during the same period, and a rise also in registration of restricted and prohibited rifles.

The Conservatives tabled legislation in October, 2011, to destroy the firearms registry. The bill, C-19, passed through Parliament quickly and took effect on April 5, 2012. The RCMP dismantled the registry in October of that year, saving Quebec records temporarily as the province mounted an ultimately unsuccessful court case in an attempt to continue long gun registration on its own.

The failure of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his Liberals to deliver on a raft of 2015 election promises to tighten gun controls and bring back mandatory records of firearm sales has one of Canada’s leading gun control advocates concerned.

The single firearms pledge that has been fulfilled from the Liberal platform is the establishment of a new civilian firearms advisory committee for the government, chaired by former Supreme Court of Canada judge John Major.

Trudeau and his cabinet postponed the promulgation of a regulation that would require Canadian firearm manufacturers and importers to comply with a UN firearm marking system intended to combat terrorism and organized crime by tracing illicit guns to originating countries, on the grounds that the elimination of the long-gun registry and requirements for records of firearm sales in Canada have “diminished” the utility of the regulation — which has been postponed by every Liberal and Conservative government since 2004.

An election promise to pass legislation taking Canada into the UN Arms Trade Treaty, aimed at regulating the illicit trade of small arms and conventional weapons, led the government to introduce legislation making good on the commitment — but the bill has not budged in the House of Commons since it was tabled for a first reading on April 13 this year.

“Quite honestly, I think there has been a vacuum, with the Liberals backing off strongly supporting gun control,” said Wendy Cukier, a founder of the Canadian Coalition for Gun Control who supported the Liberal registry in the years following the shooting deaths of 14 women, almost all engineering students, at Montreal’s L’Ecole Polytechnique in 1989.

For their part, prominent leaders of firearm advocacy groups — including the head of a new firearm rights coalition pushing to give Canadians the right to carry concealed handguns in public — argue the growth in firearm imports and ownership is unrelated to the elimination of the registry.

“I would say that has nothing to do with the registration, actually,” said Rod Giltaca, a certified firearm safety instructor under the Canadian Firearms Program and president of the Canadian Coalition for Firearm Rights.

“The recent surge is (due to) the fact that owning guns has become a very popular thing to do, and the idea of owning firearms is really kind of reaching its potential, because firearms are a great thing, they are a fantastic thing for about ninety nine per cent of the people … for one per cent, maybe not a great thing,” said Giltaca, who runs a business offering firearm and tactical training for amateurs and professionals.

The head of a firearms lobby that represents 15,000 gun owners and sport shooters says attitudes toward firearms have changed since the Polytechnique shooting and the federal registry established in its wake.

“I think the climate around firearms ownership and shooting as a hobby has improved in Canada,” said Tony Bernardo, one of the most well-known firearm advocates in the country and executive director of the Canadian Sport Shooting Association.

“What it’s about is the entire climate in Canada, where people realize that sport shooters and sport shooting was not the great bogeyman and Satan that it had been in the previous twenty years,” Bernardo said. “The reality was that the sport shooters of Canada were very decent people that were adequately checked out by government licence, and of course the long gun registry is repealed and what happens? Nothing, absolutely nothing, the streets don’t run with blood, nothing happened, absolutely zero, no increase in mass shooting, no increase in anything.”

Cukier argued police reports that show an increase in criminal handguns originating in Canada rather than the U.S. offer evidence that the rise in handgun ownership in Canada has led to a spike in illegal gun ownership.

“The relaxation of controls on firearms has fuelled the demand, making it easier to get guns legally, that then has driven increases in imports and one of the unintended consequences of that is more diversion of legal guns to illegal markets,” Cukier said.

B.C. Conservative MP Bob Zimmer attributes the surge in gun imports to demographic changes — a new generation of Canadians who like guns.

“I think part of the answer is the millennial is becoming a firearms owner,” said Zimmer.

“I have a son that’s grown up as a video game guy. Well, these guys have used it in games, now they actually want to own that particular firearm and they’ll use it on the range or go hunting with it, or whatever. They’re becoming consumers instead of just using it in a virtual place.”

The most recent Statistics Canada Juristat publication on homicide in Canada reveals the number of firearm-related homicides increased for the second consecutive year in 2015.

Stabbings remained the most common method of homicide — 37 per cent of all homicides — with shootings second at 30 per cent and beatings at 23 per cent.

The Juristat says police reported 178 firearm-related homicides out of a total of 604 homicides in Canada for 2015 — 83 more homicides overall for 2014 and 23 more firearm homicides than in 2014.

The rate of firearm-related homicides increased by 14 per cent to 0.5 per cent per 100,000, the highest reported rate since 2010.

Juristat cited another study that found a 22 per cent increase in the rate of all violent firearms offences. Handguns were used in 57 per cent of firearms-related homicides in 2015, down from 67 per cent in 2014.

The Juristat article made a point of noting that the number of homicides committed with sawed-off rifles or shotguns rose to 23 in 2015 from only six in 2014 — an increase of 283 per cent.