Legislation to Protect Firearms Owners Takes Effect Today

May 19, 2023

Important provisions in The Saskatchewan Firearms Act will come into force today. The Act protects the rights of lawful firearms owners across the province and enhances public safety.

"The Government of Saskatchewan is pleased to see this legislation come into effect today," Corrections, Policing and Public Safety Minister Christine Tell said. "This legislation reflects our commitment to keeping Saskatchewan people and communities safe, while also addressing violent gun crime and promoting responsible firearms ownership in our province."

The new provisions coming into force:

establish licensing requirements for seizure agents involved in firearms expropriation under new federal laws;
establish provincial firearms offences that will promote the safe and responsible use of firearms;
allow the Minister to appoint a Firearms Compensation Committee to determine the fair market value of any firearms, ammunition and related accessories being expropriated by the federal government; and
allow for designation and approval of firearms testing facilities.

Two additional provisions under the Act are expected to come into force in the coming months - the requirement for payment of fair compensation for any firearms being expropriated by the federal government, and forensic and ballistic testing requirements of those expropriated firearms. These remaining sections will be brought into force after the necessary planning, implementation and regulatory changes are completed to ensure proper oversight.

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Video: From Students to Solutions | On The Brink: Season 2, Episode 14

Ask Canada’s most decorated soybean breeder his favourite part of the job and he doesn’t name a single variety. He names the students.

Istvan Rajcan is a professor of soybean breeding and genetics in the Department of Plant Agriculture at the University of Guelph, where he has run the soybean breeding program for 28 and a half years. In that time he has developed 87 soybean cultivars, published 140 refereed papers and trained 51 graduate students. In 2025 he received the Public Sector Impact Award from the National Association for Plant Breeding.

He is also worried. In this episode he says Canada is at a crossroads, pointing to recent government cuts to plant breeding programs and to the facilities that support them. His prescription is structural. "Plant breeding funding formula has to be a long-term one," he says.

The formula he is defending is the public-private matching arrangement his program runs on. Private seed companies fund the work, provincial or federal money matches it, and the combined pool stretches each dollar further than either source could alone. At the National Association for Plant Breeding annual meeting in June, he says American public breeders were often surprised at how well that collaboration works in Canada.

He also describes how the people entering plant breeding have changed. His early graduate students came mostly from farms. More recently they include, in his words, "city kids who just became excited about genetics."

Topics covered:

Why public-private plant breeding funding in Canada needs a long-term

commitment rather than a larger one

How matching private seed company investment with provincial and federal

dollars multiplies research capacity

How the graduate student pipeline into plant breeding has shifted from

farm kids to city kids