Ruling on smoking issue not expected until new year

It looks like Dr. Pete Sarsfield won’t exactly get what he wanted for Christmas this year.
The Northwestern health Unit has not received any word as to whether its stance on banning smoking in public places will be recognized by the province.
“We haven’t heard anything,” the CEO and medical officer of health for the health unit said yesterday.
“One of the media outlets in the region phoned the other day and said they’d been told we’d hear something by mid-January at the earliest. But we haven’t heard anything ourselves,” added Dr. Sarsfield.
“I wish we’d heard something by now. We’ve been receiving calls from citizens who are asking, ‘Are you going to start enforcing this?’” he remarked.
“There’s places that have been anticipating action by us, and have put up ‘No smoking’ signs, but still see people lighting up because they know we can’t do anything.”
The 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 second-hand smoke is a public health hazard and therefore the health unit has 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 no-smoking 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 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.
“I have no idea what’s holding it up,” remarked Dr. Sarsfield. “The review board has neither the experience nor the expertise to say it [second-hand smoke] is not a health hazard.
“It’s dragging on way too long.”
If the appeal board’s ruling is in favour of the health unit, it then will implement an enforcement program—backed up by fines—to ban smoking in all workplaces within its jurisdiction.
But Dr. Sarsfield admitted both the health unit and the group of business owners opposing it will get a chance to appeal the decision—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 the legal costs, the health unit has appealed to local health professionals, particularly doctors, for financial support.