looks have nothing, and everything to do with it...
Here what looks have to do with it - Once upon a time when the lieberals were drawing up plans for C68, Windy Cookies went through a gun digest and circled all of the pictures of guns that looked "mean", "scary" or "bad". Seeing as the libs were totally pandering to her lobby they used this list to specifically ban a number of firearms by name.
Here's how looks have nothing to do with it - When a firearms is banned as "firearms and varients" there is some room for interpretation. Usually the decision of what is and is not a varient is made by an RCMP arms tech at the time the particular model is first imported. So, because of this you can have an M14, converted auto and a Norinco M305, which are (for all intents and purposes) identical rifles. The M14 is prohib, while the M305 isn't even restricted.
There are also those OICs that ban a firearm and a list of named varients. The AK-47 is probably the best example, as this particular prohibition order includes AK47s, some Valmets, Saiga shotguns, Dragunov SVD (has virtually nothing to do with the AK design) , Tigr, and that fugly squires bingham .22 calibre AK wannabe. Oddly, the prohibition doesn't include the Valmet Hunter M78, an SKS-D with an AK dressup kit and so on.
Anyone, feel free to jump in and correct me.