JR Cox, the owner of The Shooting Edge (TSE) in Calgary, AB was once business partners with James Bachynski. They had a falliing out, and Bachynski went on to found the Calgary Shooting Centre (CSC - Cox's maini competition). When they were partners in TSE. they imported the non-restricted Swissarms PE90 Rifles which were supposedly based on the SIG 540 platform (as are the FAMAE SG 540-series rifles). When Bachynski founded CSC, he too imported a batch of PE90 rifles. Cox acquired one of the CSC batch and determined that it was in fact based upon a select-fire SIG 550 receiver and should thus be prohibited under Canadian law. Cox contacted the RCMP and informed them of the suspect CSC batch of PE90 rifles. The RCMP examined the rifles in question and they ultimately sided with Cox determining the CSC guns to be prohibs. This had the unfortunate knock-on effect of triggering an RCMP investigation into the earlier TSE-imported PE90 rifles, which the RCMP determined to actually be SIG 550 rifles. This was contrary to Swissarms company literature, but pretty much confirmed what most owners already innately knew - they rifles were dimensionally identical to the SIG 550, just manufactured as semi-automatic-only examples instead of select-fire. This resulted in the first occasion wherein the Swissarms manufactured PE90/550 rifles were deemed to be prohibited in Canada. This prohibition was over-turned by the Conservative goverment, but reinstated by the Trudeau Liberals with the May 1st 2020 OIC.
So at the end of the day, JR Cox's attempt to bring RCMP heat down on his principal business competitor unintentionally opened a can of worms that resulted in the national prohbition of the Swissarms rifles. Some folks took that very personally and wanted JR Cox strung up on the nearest lamp post. Others such as myself reasoned that the reclassifcation of the Swissarms PE90s was inevitable, given that they were indeed semi-automatic-only examples of the SIG 550 rifle, which was already prohbted by the much earler OIC 12(5). How that came about was unfortunate, but t was only a matter of time anyways.
JR Cox took the high road and posted a public apology for his actions which had inadvertantly triggered the reclassifcation of the Swissarms PE90 rifles. The reclassification had never been JR's intented outcome. He was the primary importer and retailer of those very same rifles, and the reclassfication hurt him the most of all. Still he took the heat, accepted responsibiity for the outcome, and generally manned up the best that he could. Today, that is all ancient history about a buisness feud that went badly awry. That's it, that's all there is to the story.
