r/canadaguns May 09 '26

Feets / Collection / My build Day 4 of PAL

My Second purchase this week. Man I love this thing!
Benelli M4 AI Drone Guardian

I don’t care for the whole “AI Drone Guardian”.
I just love how it comes fully decked out.

261 Upvotes

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12

u/YDpr99 May 09 '26

Hey man recently did my CFSC course and waited the 3 weeks for the email with the link to apply for my PAL on the myCFP site. I was wondering after the 28 minimum holding period did it show you were approved online during that period or shortly after? And how long did it take for the card to come in the mail? I’m super excited I’ve been thinking about getting my pal for over 12 years now so the anticipation of waiting is brutal! 😂

11

u/GFN_good_for_nothing May 09 '26

Man, I did the course last May and made the absolutely brutal mistake of waiting until I had the budget to buy a rifle or two to send in my paperwork… 2-3 months after I filed I contacted the RCMP to make sure they had all the info they needed and that there were no issues since it was taking so long. After a couple weeks I heard back and they said “all good on our end, we completed our part of the process and the chief firearms officer of Ontario has your application now”. So I contacted the chief firearms officer of Ontario, and a couple weeks later he told me to expect a delay of 6 months. It’s already been over a year since I took the course and it’s probably going to be close to A FULL FUCKING YEAR from the time I filed for me to get my PAL. I had heard some people say they were waiting for 3-4 months and that sounded like a worst case scenario at the time, but the backlog they’re dealing with is so insanely bad right now that it’s gotten even worse. It’s not the CFOO’s fault though, they’re criminally underfunded and overworked by a government that unfortunately doesn’t give a flying fuck at a rolling donut about them. Not much you can do besides show up at protests and rallies, sign petitions, write your local, provincial, and federal politicians, and do whatever else you can to make your voice heard.

4

u/MannerCurrent7912 May 09 '26

That’s so frustrating!

5

u/GFN_good_for_nothing May 09 '26

Yeah I feel like an idiot for waiting until I had the money but what’s done is done. I wish that there was a middle ground between having our country become a hellscape of gun violence like the states, and well, whatever the fuck THIS is in Canada…

3

u/YDpr99 May 09 '26

You were submitting by paper I guess? I just did my course and now everything is online and supposedly much faster

1

u/MannerCurrent7912 May 09 '26

I submitted online

1

u/YDpr99 May 10 '26

Ya my course instructor made it sound faster like 1-3 months would be the total process now I made sure to submit everything right away the second I had my email I submitted all documents online so hopefully it’s quicker now

1

u/GFN_good_for_nothing May 09 '26

I did everything online

2

u/TheRealRyan24 May 09 '26

Thats crazy, im in Ontario and did my course in February and had my pal in hand before the end of april.

1

u/YDpr99 May 10 '26

Ya my course instructor made it sound faster like 1-3 months would be the total process now I made sure to submit everything right away the second I had my email I submitted all documents online so hopefully it’s quicker now

1

u/Ok_Competition6823 May 09 '26

When I applied in 2023 I waited over a year. And if what you said it true and it has gotten worse get ready to wait 1 to 1.5 years then.

1

u/TheArchitechs May 11 '26

I waited a year and a week exactly when i got mine like 3 years ago, it was brutal

2

u/SpartanA259 May 09 '26

I had my pal for over a month before they changed it to approved

1

u/MannerCurrent7912 May 09 '26

For 5 months it said the same thing. Initial review has been done…check back at a later date… After I applied it took about 5 months. I emailed them and they replied that it was approved and the card will be printed and sent in up to 4-6 weeks. I got it two weeks later.

1

u/AsparagusUnhappy5395 May 09 '26

I actually called on the 29th day and got told over the phone that I was approved. Give em a call on day 29 and hopefully they’ll have some good news.

1

u/YDpr99 May 10 '26

Ya this was my plan I heard the process is faster now so the 29th day will be the end of this month and I’ll call

1

u/Ok-Raise-5115 May 09 '26

I did the course back in 2014 and submitted my paperwork back in November of 2025. From mailing my stuff in to PAL in hand was like 35 days total and that’s with decade plus old paperwork

1

u/Strong-Owl-55 May 10 '26

I did my course January 4th and got my pal march 1st so i was pretty stoked sent all my stuff in online

1

u/Familiar_Hunt_5164 May 10 '26

Mine took 8 months to come. Its sadly just a long process. I got 100% on both theory and practical tests, I applied online, enquired with the CFP and my CFO frequently but still had to wait it out.

1

u/YDpr99 May 10 '26

My friends who applied over the last year made it sound like the process was different from how I applied recently. I got my course results in person then waited 3 weeks for a email with a link to apply for my pal on myCFP where I needed to answer a bunch of questions give two references and one reference for my image which I also had to take a selfie and submit online so I applied for my PAL completely online end to end not sure if the process was the same for anyone else as I believe this whole online system is very new over the last couple months?