Gibsons could see a new smoking bylaw later this year.
The Town was close several years ago to adopting restrictions that are tougher than the provincial minimums, but the bylaw stalled before going on to final adoption.
A delegation from Vancouver Coastal Health (VCH) was on hand at the March 1 committee of the whole meeting to ask council to move forward on tightening the rules to include bans on smoking in parks, on beaches and trails, and on bar and restaurant patios, and to increase the buffer zone around doors and windows to 9.5 metres.
The province requires only a three-metre buffer.
“I recognize that we’ve recently entered into arrangements with Vancouver Coastal Health with respect to healthy communities, and so it’s important that that agreement not be hollow and we look into what we can do to, in fact, honour commitments in that agreement,” Mayor Wayne Rowe told the delegation.
Rowe also said, however, that there are still some issues that need to be looked at in the text of the bylaw VCH is proposing. They include: the buffer zones, the specific areas in the town it would apply, and how to handle enforcement.
Coun. Stafford Lumley, who’s a restaurateur, says he wants to see a tougher bylaw in Gibsons, but it has to be evenly applied.
“I’m not sure about grandfathering-in patios,” Lumley said. “I don’t know how you can have a non-smoking bylaw and then say in another caption, ‘but you can smoke.’ That’s kinda strange, and it might cause unfair advantage [for grandfathered establishments] if somebody else wanted to open a pub or something like that.”
Other councillors were also clear that they didn’t like the idea of grandfathering.
“I’m not really keen on anything in that direction either – I think we should be clear,” Coun. Silas White said. “I think we should be consistent for everybody.”
Coun. Charlene SanJenko pointed out that grandfathering might send the wrong message.
“I think you run the risk, unless you’re really clear on the stand that you’re taking, that you’re, in fact, creating some safe zones to smoke,” SanJenko said. “I would want to be really clear that we’re moving ahead with a fairly bold policy or we’re not.”
CAO Emanuel Machado said the success of any bylaw would depend on good communication with the public, and that’s where VCH and other jurisdictions like Sechelt would be vital.
“Part of this [healthy communities] agreement is to improve clarity to Sunshine Coast residents, so our hope is that Sechelt will adopt a similar bylaw,” he said, noting that Sechelt staff is already working on theirs.
Lumley said they should try to find a way to do that public education without adding to sign-clutter around the town.
Rowe told the VCH representatives that council is “prepared to look at a bylaw that does ban smoking on, basically, public property. I don’t know if we have a consensus on distances yet.”
It’s unclear when a bylaw would be ready for a council vote.
