Manitoba looking at becoming first province to ban smoking provincewide
Sep. 28, 2003
WINNIPEG (CP) - Manitoba could become the first province to go cold turkey and ban smoking wherever people work, indoors or out, with no ifs ands or butts.
Some say that would make the province the most progressive government in Canada; others compare the move to Nazi Germany. Bland opinion seems hard to find in the spicy stew an all-party committee of the legislature must digest as it prepares to come up with a recommendation as early as November.
Dr. Mark Taylor, a Winnipeg physician and vice-president of Physicians for a Smoke-Free Canada, holds the former opinion. He says British Columbia and Prince Edward Island came close with rules that confine smokers, but both stop a little short.
"B.C. and Prince Edward Island are both good (but) neither one of them are excellent, and we hope we can prevail on the government of Manitoba to bring forward the first excellent law in Canada," says Taylor.
He cites mounting evidence on second-hand smoke, which he says should prove the case to anyone.
Smokers like Warren Klass aren't buying.
"You're a citizen who's obeying all the laws and all of a sudden some people decide they want to de-normalize you for some great higher purpose, for some wonderful fantasy of the secure and sanitary utopia, as Hitler called it," said Klass.
Klass is president of FORCES Canada. It stands for Fight Ordinances to Restrict Control and Eliminate Smoking.
As the committee wrapped up its public hearings last week in Winnipeg, Klass reminded it that Hitler was a non-smoker who waged a determined anti-smoking campaign in Germany, which failed.
More typical of the majority opinion at the hearings is Patricia Lane, a member of a Winnipeg high school parents council who wants to ensure a ban extends to smoking anywhere on school grounds.
She says to do otherwise is like telling kids they can only play with sharp knives in a designated area, adding that protection should extend to the home.
"Obviously, I think parents shouldn't expose their children to second-hand smoke," says Lane.
Many provinces have been wrestling with this issue of smoking bans as more and more municipalities bring in their own.
British Columbia got close but backed down after a court decision and then the election of a new government put the brakes on an all-out ban using workplace safety regulations.
In the end, the province decided to allow specially ventilated smoking rooms in bars and restaurants. Prince Edward Island has had a similar system in place since May.
That solution is just fine for Courtney Donovan of the Canadian Restaurant and Foodservices Association.
"It's not the perfect solution. It doesn't work for every establishment," she says.
"But there's 5,000 food service establishments in B.C. (and) 4,500 of them chose voluntarily to go smoke free. Only 500 of them decided they wanted to put in a smoking room. I see no reason why that wouldn't work in Manitoba."
Manitoba, however, has been under pressure to copy Winnipeg's tough no-smoking bylaw or an even tougher one in Brandon, the province's second-largest city, which makes no allowance for smoking rooms.
Manitoba workplace regulations already specify that exposure to airborne carcinogens must be controlled to as close to zero as practicable. Tobacco smoke produces some of those chemicals.
In an internal report, the government has been urged to bring in a phased-in ban. Smoking rooms would be allowed for a year, then eliminated and followed within three years by a complete ban of smoking indoors or outdoors at any workplace.
Stan Struthers, the government-appointed committee chairman, is non-committal, but opposition members suggest a ban is coming and only the details remain to be worked out.
"I think this committee is going to bring forward a recommendation for banning smoking provincewide in the workplace and in public places," says Liberal leader Jon Gerrard.
Conservative Denis Rocan, a reformed smoker, says he sees the issue as black and white.
"This is not a time to be piecemeal . . . you're either pregnant or you're not pregnant. So if you're going to do it, bite the bullet, let it happen."
But smokers like George McKeever see it as the beginning of the end.
"Next we can expect the secret police to patrol the streets with infrared heat-seeking devices to track us down in our bedrooms," said McKeever, 79, as he shuffled out of the room where hearings were held last week.
"George Orwell, how right you were."