Dining with bureaucrats

"Hi, I'm Jeff! I'll be your waiter tonight. Enjoy your dinner, but remember that I'm required by Vancouver City Council to ensure that you 'conform to society's norms' while in our establishment. Have a great evening!"

How many of us would like to be greeted that way at the start of a quiet dinner in our favourite restaurant? Most of us would find the approach a little bizarre and more than a little insulting -- except, perhaps, the City Council of Vancouver, B.C. and the city's Health Board. In the wake of a smoking ban bylaw that went into effect last month, Vancouver is hounding its hard-working restaurateurs into accepting the ban -- a restriction that threatens to ruin businesses; to maim or kill many enjoyable, well-established restaurants that have graced this community for years.

It's hardly surprising that restaurateurs haven't been keen on this bylaw, and the city knows it well. In an effort to head off a groundswell of non-compliance, the Health Board's Environmental Health Division has sent out a circular "explaining" the bylaw to affected businesses -- a communication which can only be described as a masterpiece of the iron-fist-in-a-velvet-glove school of intimidation tactics.

"Continuing offences will likely be responded to with continuing, 'daily' charges," the Health Board promises primly, just in case anyone wonders if the city intends to be heavy-handed and harassing about enforcement.

Concerned about economics losses resulting from the alienation of faithful old customers? No problem, the health police blithely assure restaurateurs -- just get new customers: "Vancouver restaurants will ... have to do their part by adapting to the new marketplace and attracting patrons who seek out 'smoke-free' establishments."

Moreover, city hall bureaucrats -- no doubt all experienced entrepreneurs in the notoriously competitive restaurant trade -- are confident that economic losses are not much of an issue. They make vague, reassuring noises about the experience in "other jurisdictions." ("Other jurisdictions" means various U.S. cities where restaurant smoking bans have been tried, since the Canadian experiments in Vancouver and Toronto haven't been around long enough for a test.) Well, some of the news coming from south of the border is bad news indeed.

Some examples: A Southern California Business Association survey of 600 restaurants, released last April, found that half of the establishments lost significant business (an average 14.3 per cent drop) and expected to lose more as the result of smoking bans. A survey of New York restaurants conducted last year showed the ban in that city resulted in 67 per cent of restaurants experiencing sales declines averaging 19.9 per cent. More than 45 per cent of the establishments surveyed said they had laid off employees as a result of the ban.

In this month's issue of The American Spectator magazine, senior correspondent John Corry chronicles the experience in Mesa, Arizona, where the local smoking ban is destroying people's livelihoods: "...the Corner Cafe is up for sale. Donna Thornton used her life savings to open it. It is small and neat, with whitewashed walls and red-checkered tablecloths, and Ms. Thornton's two daughters work there as waitresses. But the smoking ban has killed breakfast, and lunch is up and down. No one wants to buy the Corner Cafe now, and Ms. Thornton is quietly desperate. The troops are full of stories like that. Hard times have come, and life is being leached out of Mesa."

One has to wonder if the folks at Vancouver City Hall would be willing to bet their own jobs on the bland assurances they are offering to restaurateurs here.

The crowning arrogance of the obey-us-or-else newsletter comes in this sentence: "We expect your patrons to conform to society's norms while in your establishment." Isn't it comforting to know that, in a world of uncertainty and change, Vancouver City Hall has the power and authority to establish norms for all of society?