The Northwestern Health Unit officially has learned it will have to wait until at least next month to find out if the provincial Health Services Review Appeal Board decides in favour of its stance on banning smoking in public places.
“We found out after the media,” Dr. Pete Sarsfield, CEO and medical officer of health for the health unit, said this morning, referring to an article on the issue that appeared in the Dec. 17 edition of the Times.
“We got a letter saying they’d let us know what they’d decided by mid-January at the earliest,” he stressed. “I shake my head. What are you gonna do?” Dr. Sarsfield noted if the ruling is in the health unit’s favour (that is, the appeal board decides the health unit has the right to enforce smoking bans in public places on the grounds second-hand smoke is a health hazard), health unit staff are poised to crack down on business owners who refuse to “butt out.”^But he added the health unit may not have as much work ahead of it handing out fines as it might have even a year or two ago because a wide-scale shift in attitudes appears to be increasing every day.
“I wonder if it’s going to be a self-enforcing thing?” Dr. Sarsfield remarked. “After all, it was recently announced that Ireland was going to get rid of smoking in public places and Norway was going to do it, too.
“The world is recognizing the risks of second-hand smoke. It’s something that’s evolving in the human consciousness,” Dr.
Sarsfield added.
“Sure, there’s the diehards that will hang in there until their last breath. But Ireland has a long history of smoking, and they’re going to change,” he noted.
“I think it’s going to happen everywhere, sooner than later.”^The local health unit first directed all municipalities in the Kenora and Rainy River districts to ban smoking in enclosed public places in 2002—on the grounds secondhand smoke is a public health hazard and therefore the health unit had the right enforce anything that might harm the public.
Then in January of this year, Dr.
Sarsfield said he intended to lay charges under the Health Protection and Promotion Act against businesses and workplaces that refused to comply with his nosmoking edict.
But resistance from some restaurant and bar owners, particularly in the Kenora area, who said the health unit couldn’t deny them their rights and hurt their business at the same time, saw the matter go before a three-person committee from the provincial Health Services Review Appeal Board this spring.
The health unit has had an action before the appeal board, which consists of two lawyers and a consultant from Toronto and Kitchener, since then, and last met with them in late September.
But Dr. Sarsfield admitted both the health unit and the group of business owners opposing the smoking ban will have a chance to appeal the ruling—regardless of what it may be—and so the end to the battle may not as near as he’d prefer.
The health unit has spent roughly $150,000 defending its designation of second-hand smoke as a “health hazard.”^To help cover its legal costs, the health unit appealed to health professionals for financial support.
Fort Frances Times
Local News from Across the Rainy River District
