It's illegal to cut any barrel below 18.5" in Canada, you'd have to get a whole new barrel made to replace it.
Its illegal to cut down a RIFLE or SHOTGUN barrel to below that distance WHILE it is installed on a gun, UNLESS you are a licensed firearms manufacturer.
Further, it remains an open question whether or not removing a factory barrel and installing a shorter OEM barrel would save you as the court could easily determine that barrel substitution falls within "a firearm that is adapted from a rifle or shotgun, whether by sawing, cutting or
any other alteration, and that, as so adapted,
(i) is less than 660 mm in length, or
(ii) is 660 mm or greater in length and has a barrel less than 457 mm in length,
The legislative intent is to prevent people from creating their own short firearms. Its an easy argument to make that swapping barrels that in the end has the same result is within the legislative intent of what the criminal code meant to prohibit.
What?
Are you saying that a shorter than 18" barrel cannot be shortened?
If you are your wrong.
Certainly you can do it. The act of manufacturing a prohibited firearm is not an illegal (except for full making a full auto). The barrel itself would not be illegal either, Unless it was a handgun barrel shortened to under 105mm.
However if that barrel was on a rifle or a shotgun the firearm would then be classed as prohibited, possession of which would be illegal without the appropriate license and registration certificate.
If you have an NR firearm with a barrel less than 18" and your shorten it yourself, then the firearm becomes a prohib. That is clear as day, no debate.
If you have an NR mares leg, which has an OAL of 24", and you change the stock or barrel to make it LONGER, such that the OAL is now 25", then the RCMP SFSS believes that such a firearm will become prohibited, because it has been modified, and has an OAL under 26" or a barrel under 18". Its stupid, but then so is the RCMP SFSS.
Poorly written laws can only possibly yield poor interpretations.
Remember OAL requirements for NR firearms do not apply, so long as (A) the gun cannot be fired when reduced to less than minimum length "by means of a folding or telescoping stock", and (B) the firearm is not "sawed-off or otherwise altered" to below minimum length.
The Rossi Ranch Hands have a 24" overall length and are still NR, because Rossi calls them rifles, AND they do technically have a "stock" which further reinforces their claim that the Ranch Hand is indeed a rifle.
I believe the damning factor here will be that Remington has called this a "pistol" though, which sets a different precedent...
There are no OAL requirements for NR firearms. NR firearms are the default of what is left over if a firearm escaped the prohibited or restricted definitions. It is the RESTRICTED class of firearms which captures firearms with telescoping stocks, and it is the PROHIBITED class which includes firearms which have been sawed off or otherwise to below minimum length.
Rossi very much markets the Ranch Hand as pistol in the united states, in order to avoid Federal Laws for Short Barrelled Rifles.
It is not the stock that makes the RCMP deem the Ranch Hand a rifle, but the ACTION. Being a Lever, the RCMP are of the mind that Lever Actions are very much an action requiring two handed operation, and therefore do not meet the definition of handgun. A bolt action gun should logically be given the same treatment.