The provision of Bill C-42 that would give gun owners with expired licenses a 6-month grace period is finally set to come into force by November 30

More than two years after Bill C-42, known as the Common Sense Firearms Licensing Act, received royal assent and became law, a much-anticipated provision is finally coming into force on November 30.

The provision gives gun owners with expired licenses a grace period in which they can renew their license without fear of being treated as a criminal. Under current laws, any person with an expired license may be charged with unauthorized possession of a firearm, a criminal offence that carries up to 5 years in prison if convicted.

The grace period, which would last 6 months, will treat a recently-expired license simply as an administrative or paperwork issue and not a legal one.

The federal government, however, still intends to repeal “certain provisions” of Bill C-42, something they have stated during their election platform prior to being elected.

While they haven’t indicated precisely which provisions would go and which would stay, they have repeated on many occasions the provision that they say would allow gun owners to transport restricted and prohibited firearms without a permit – a glaringly false and misleading statement that is devoid of fact-based decision making they also claimed they would utilized, as opposed to the previous government’s “emotion-based” decisions.