With the G22 rifle, the RCMP has at least a flimsy excuse for the reclassification— it says because the rifle can be easily shortened by removing the back end, it’s too easily concealable to be a non-restricted rifle (the blame still lies with the government for making the mistake in the first place, but at least that’s something). The decision to ban the AP-80, however, has no logic behind it at all. The RCMP claims that it was “incorrectly registered” as non-restricted because the AP-80 is a “variant of the design of the firearm commonly known as the AK-47 rifle” — a Soviet-designed military combat rifle.
Except … it isn’t. At all. The AP-80 fires an entirely different (and much weaker) kind of ammunition, using a different internal mechanism and is built from completely different materials and components (precisely zero of the parts of the AP-80 and AK-47 are compatible or interchangeable). The only thing the AP-80 has in common with the AK-47 is its silhouette — when the AP-80 was designed, the manufacturer decided to make it look like the famous AK-47, for purely marketing reasons. As a rifle, the AP-80 is a completely unremarkable low-caliber plinker. Only by making it look like a famous military rifle could the company hope to sell many copies, so that’s what they did. The RCMP is banning the AP-80 because it looks scary.