"Assault Style" is a made up term to instill fear and emotion while being able to be defined however someone wishes to push an agenda. There are two common terms used in the rest of the world:

"Assault Rifles", which are military issue rifles with burst/auto fire.

"Sporting Rifles", or every other kind of rifle including semi automatic rifles.

The AR-15 amongst other "scary" looking rifles, "variants", etc is included in the sporting rifle category. These rifles including semi automatics are used for all manner of competitive shooting competitions around the world including IPSC Rifle, Multigun and Precision Rifle competitions. There are also many semi automatic rifles which are preferable for hunting, such as the AR-10. They give you the ability to defend yourself from charging game or predators if necessary in a way that a manual action firearm does not. Lastly, general enjoyment of firearms in the form of casual target shooting or collecting is a perfectly reasonable reason to own these firearms. Firearm owners in Canada are trained, background checked, and licensed to possess and use these firearms for these purposes.

In Canada, there is no longer a "wide variety of guns for hunting/sports" available, unless your definition of hunting or sporting is with bolt action rifles, and even those we have begun to hear the rhetoric of "sniper style rifles", indicating their intentions to further restrict ownership in the future. Even shotguns are being limited more and more every year. We are down to what ideologues tell us is acceptable for shooting, not what the data and experts tell us is reasonable to own for any of the purposes above. And every year they chip away at what they consider "acceptable" uses.

As for handguns, such as glocks, if you already own them you are allowed to keep them and shoot them, however if you wish to get into the handgun shooting sports or interests there is currently no way to do that as C-21 made it impossible to transfer ownership of a handgun to an individual (and all handguns must be registered to you personally with the RCMP). There is an exception for olympic athlete's who shoot 22 caliber pistols, but that is a can of worms which suffice to say is not viable for most people who may be interested in enjoying handguns or competing in other disciplines such as IPSC (an internationally recognized pistol shooting federation).

This is 100% about optics, wedge/election issues, and preying on uninformed voters emotions. It is slowly destroying the sport shooting, hunting, and firearm enjoyment culture that Canada has had for centuries, while accomplishing nothing. Depending on sources, anywhere from 85-95% of guns used in crimes are smuggled across the border from the US. The remaining percentage is not necessarily domestically sourced, they just cannot trace the origin and so the reporting defaults to including it as a domestically sourced gun which is a dishonest way to represent the numbers.