Pubdate: Wed, 03 Dec 2001
Source: Report Magazine (CN BC)
Copyright: 2001 Report Magazine, United Western Comm Ltd
Contact:  http://www.report.ca
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1327
Author: Lynne Cohen

OTTAWA'S AMAZING BYLAW

If City Counsellors Can Wipe Out Smoking, Why Not Try Them On Illegal Drugs?

NOWHERE in Canada are smokers more ferociously treated these days than in 
the nation's capital, where a draconian bylaw last August entirely banished 
the hateful weed from all workplaces, restaurants and bars. Predictable 
indignation ensued among Ottawa smokers and restaurant proprietors, 
especially since their pleas for provision of separate, ventilated, 
air-filtered smoking rooms were summarily rejected. And now, adding insult 
to injury, chief medical health officer Robert Cushman, who lobbied heavily 
for the 100% ban, has proposed an exception: "smoking huts" for city bus 
drivers who cannot leave their employer's property.

Mr. Cushman's rationale is that city drivers fall outside municipal, and 
inside provincial, jurisdiction. "This just doesn't make sense," fumes Dan 
Taite, fundraising co-ordinator for PUBCO (the Ottawa Coalition of Pubs and 
Bars), a six-month-old group fighting the bylaw in court. Furthermore, 
giving bus drivers an "out" denied to others is "a contradiction and 
absolutely hypocritical." Bartenders cannot leave their bars, he notes, and 
go out to a hut for a puff. Meanwhile bankruptcy threatens some PUBCO members.

But hypocrisy reigns in Ottawa, Mr. Taite charges. For example, results of 
the regional health department's pre-ban poll allegedly were tampered with. 
Moreover, plainclothes bylaw officers, in an unprecedented tactical 
innovation, haunt restaurants to nail them for infractions which carry 
fines up to $5,000.

Notably different, meanwhile, is the official treatment accorded various 
other weeds. Ottawans living near downtown parks complain bitterly that 
overt drug-dealing nightly plagues their neighbourhoods. Despite their 
repeated calls, they say, the police refuse to act. Staff Sergeant Leo 
Janveau explains that this is "because we have civil rights in this 
country. We get general complaints about drug offences all the time...but 
the Charter of Rights will not allow us to go and search people just 
because they look a little bit suspicious." Undercover work to catch 
dealers, he adds, is costly and seldom successful.

PUBCO members would doubtless give their tobacco-stained eye teeth for such 
an attitude from the city's bylaw officers. Dan Taite told city councillors 
that he, being Jewish, knows Gestapo tactics when he sees them. He cited 
"government-sanctioned intimidation, deliberate misinformation, undercover 
officers spying on businesses, and a 'snitch' line for anonymous callers to 
turn in their neighbours."

One of PUBCO's many sympathizers is Ottawa Sun columnist Claudette Cain, 
former mayor of Gloucester (now amalgamated into Ottawa), who says she has 
"a real problem with [bureaucratic] lies." Of the 504 Ottawa residents 
polled in the survey, she notes, 420 were non-smokers. Yet 75% of poll 
respondents thought smoking should be allowed in separate, ventilated 
rooms--information which somehow failed to reach city council. This curious 
circumstance has also upset some councillors.

Currently, PUBCO and the city are arguing whether a new Decima poll says 
business revenue is not declining. The health department is not talking. 
But bylaw department director Susan Jones says things could not be going 
better. "We're at 95% compliance," she exults--much higher than with other 
bylaws, and way ahead of other Ontario towns. Nor do her enforcing officers 
encounter animosity, she claims; in fact, they are sometimes "applauded or 
hugged."

But while tobacco, although still a legal substance, is so efficiently 
suppressed, drug dealers and users infest public parks with various illegal 
substances. There are also the weekend "raves." For instance, businessmen 
in the central Byward Market area near the alcohol-free nightclub Illusion 
are wondering about all the young people who pour into the street around 9 
a.m. Saturday and Sunday, dishevelled and dazed after a hard night's 
raving. Onlookers conclude they must be on drugs, particularly Ecstasy.

Illusion's owner Manon Gollain denies any such thing. "Everyone who comes 
to my club gets searched by us," she avers, "because we do not want trouble 
with the police." Police make visits too. "We send youth squad people into 
Illusion and such places all the time," says Staff Sgt. Janveau. "We even 
had a social worker that went into the club and did a lot of work in the 
raves...But we simply don't have the authority or grounds to do something 
at any moment without specific information. That is the difficulty for a 
police officer."

But if public smoking is so easy to stamp out, Ottawans wonder how come it 
is so impossible to stamp out drug dealing. Some maintain, however, that 
there's an obvious answer: have city council pass a bylaw prohibiting drug 
dealing in parks and at raves, and unleash the enforcement officers. The 
druggies would not stand a chance.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom