Firearms Act
RCMP and the transport regulations. Whether you may lawfully have and move the firearm.
For a non-restricted firearm: Unloaded. That is all — no lock and no case required.
Government rules
The rules that apply no matter which airline you fly. These come from CATSA, Transport Canada, the RCMP Canadian Firearms Program and the CBSA.
Three sets of rules stack, and they say different things
A Canadian flying with a firearm has to satisfy three separate regimes at once. No official page merges them, and the strictest requirement in each row is the one that governs.
Aviation security
Transport Canada and CATSA. What may go into the cabin or the hold.
For a non-restricted firearm: Unloaded and in a locked hard-sided container.
Contract of carriage
Your airline. Whether they will carry it at all, and on what terms.
For a non-restricted firearm: Different for every airline — fees, notice periods, route limits.
Never stop at the first answer you find
"Unloaded is enough" is true under the Firearms Act and wrong at an airport. The locked hard-sided case comes from aviation security, and your airline may require more again. The strictest requirement that applies to your trip is the one to follow.
The three pages
Airport screening
CATSA and Transport Canada: never in carry-on, what checked baggage requires, the
5 kg ammunition limit, and the powders that are banned from both.
Transport rules by firearm class
Licence, locking and container rules for non-restricted and restricted firearms,
when an Authorization to Transport is needed, and the opaque-case requirement that
no aviation source mentions.
Leaving and returning to Canada
CBSA exit and re-entry steps, form BSF407, what you need to bring a firearm home,
the September 2024 licence rule for ammunition and magazines, and the official US
links.
Storage and handling at home
A separate regime from the three layers above: what SOR/98-209 requires of you before the trip starts. The rules differ by class in a way most summaries flatten.
Storage and handling by firearm class
Storage, display, transport and ammunition by class, quoted from SOR/98-209 with
section numbers. A trigger lock alone complies for a non-restricted firearm; a
restricted or prohibited firearm needs a lock and a locked container.
Firearms prohibited by Order in Council
The 2020, 2024 and 2025 Orders in Council: how to check whether your firearm is
affected, why you store it to its former class, what the Amnesty Orders permit, and
why no end date can be published. Re-checked daily.
Where this site stops
Some questions have no published answer. Rather than guess, each page lists them as unanswered and names who to phone. FlyerArms publishes no flight steps for a prohibited firearm, because no official source sets out a route to fly with one, though the storage pages do cover what the regulations and the Amnesty Orders require. It also does not cover road or rail travel, provincial hunting regulations, non-residents flying into Canada, or US state law.