Victoria residents blow smoke

in the face of the new bylaw

by Sarah Schmidt - Special to the Globe and Mail, Victoria

22 February 1999

Almost every time the ashtray police walk into a Victoria bar, they get heckled and sent packing.

"You can see the kind of reception we get," said Les Potter, struggling to be heard over the Nazi references hurled at him and his badge-carrying colleague at the Esquimalt Inn."

"This is typical," said Potter, regional manager of health protection and environmental services for the Capital Health Region, the branch charged with enforcing Victoria and area's seven-week old antismoking bylaw.

Usually, bylaw enforcers have to call in the police at the Esquimalt Inn if they want to ticket angry customers for defying Canada's toughest antismoking bylaw. The rules stipulate that no person can carry a burning cigarette, pipe or cigar in any building except in a private residence or a private vehicle.

Bars, bingo halls, legions, private clubs, old-age homes and restaurants are required to post a no-smoking sign, but it's up to the handful of capital-region staff to make sure individuals are abiding by the bylaw in over 1,000 establishments scattered of 2,420 square kilometres, 12 municipalities and four electoral areas in the southern end of Vancouver Island.

Sometimes things turn ugly. Police say assault charges may be laid after a nighttime altercation last Tuesday between the bar manager of the Swiftsure Restaurant and Lounge and a regional bylaw officer.

It took six weeks for the City of Toronto's tough antismoking bylaw to die in 1997, and now the eclectic group of British Columbia's "freedom fighters," as they call themselves, vow to press on until the clean-air bylaw goes up in smoke here.

"We want to do what Toronto did," said Victor Zanet, owner of the Esquimalt Inn.

The fight isn't about smoking, they say, but about Big Brother threatening Canadian's freedom of choice.

"Where does it go from here? What's next?" asked Maxwell Palmer, general manager of the Elephant and Castle pub and board member of the newly formed Victoria Freedom of Choice Coalition.

The message is striking a chord with more and more people, as stories surface about overaggressive enforcement officers, ill-treated hard-working waitresses and resentful veterans.

The images are powerful: the 82-year-old grandmother who has no one to play bingo with any more because her smoking friend is afraid of bylaw enforcers; a 71-year-old widow who shook in the Holland House, an ethnic club where she plays cards on Friday nights; the waitress who turned to the RCMP after an enforcement official followed her home and banged on her door, frightening her two young children. Or the 81-year-old veteran who "wanted to take them outside to teach them why he went to war," as Doug Grant, general manager of the Esquimalt Legion put it.

Las year, Don Rittaler of the Sooke River Hotel was on his own when he filed a constitutional challenge against the anticipated bylaw, arguing it contravened Sections 7 and 26 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Now, more than 500 supporters show up to the coalition's meetings and fund raisers.

Meanwhile, Alfred Sillem estimates that only one in five bars are still complying with the bylaw; some never did and others lost too much money in the first month and switched back to the old, smoking days, he said. Nobody knows the bar scene like Mr. Sillem, known here as Alfred the flower man. He visits more than 60 establishments six nights a week, as he has done for the last 16 years.

Even when tickets are issued, most are ignored. Of the 111 tickets issued to date, only three have been paid, said Dianna Stevenson, public-health educator for the Capital Health Region. Fourteen tickets have already been disputed, and 70 summonses sent out, she said.

The provincial ombudsman is investigating the Capital Regional District, focusing on those aging smokers who live in long-term-care facilities.

Still, the antismoking crusaders forge ahead.

"There is no age exemption to our laws. It's still creating a hazard," said Dr. Richard Stanwick, director of clinical information for the CRD and most vehement defender of the bylaw.

Health Canada has declared environmental tobacco a Class A carcinogen like benzene and asbestos. It is known to cause cancer in humans - and hospitality-industry workers face a significantly elevated cancer risk when compared to the general population.

"How can you plead for sympathy when you are a lawbreaker?" Dr. Stanwick asks.

To make it easier to nab lawbreakers, the Region has changed the rules of the game: in order to enforce regulatory bylaws, the ashtray police now have the right to enter an establishment that is closed - a power that eludes real police officers, who still need either a search warrant or permission.

The bylaw enforcers also rely on snitches to get the job done. They received 254 tips by phone in January.

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