[DIV class=headline]Has it come to this? Quebec butts out
[DIV class=subheadline]A new law takes effect at the end of the month to outlaw smoking in Quebec bars and restaurants
But enforcement may be a problem in a province where one in four still smokes,
Sean Gordon reports
[DIV class=pubdate]May 20, 2006. 09:46 AM
[DIV class=byline]SEAN GORDON
[DIV class=byline]QUEBEC BUREAU CHIEF[/DIV]
[DIV class=articlebody][!-- icx_story_begin --]MONTREAL—It is one of the hundreds of bars in Quebec that could lay claim to the title of smokiest in the province, a tavern known to locals as les Verres Stérilisés.
The old stone tables inside the bar, named for the sterilized beer glasses that are advertised on its neon sign, attest to long decades of dedicated drinking.
The tables bear the telltale brown scars of cigarette butts and overflowing ashtrays, the bar's nicotine-tinged walls and tin ceiling are a testament to the heavy smokers who haunt the darkly lit room daily from 11 a.m. to 3 a.m.
Yellowed liquor permits from the 1950s, when the main requirement to sell booze was to display a large enough photo of then-premier Maurice Duplessis, are screwed onto the walls.
It's early evening, and the clutch of daytime drinkers — nearly all of them men, mostly retired blue-collar workers and war veterans — is thinning out in favour of a younger evening crowd.
The cigarette fog is thick and acrid. Of the 30 or 40 people in the bar, you can count the non-smokers on both hands.
"I have people smoking in my face all day long. Even if I didn't smoke, I'd still be getting a pack a day's worth," says a bartender who gives his name only as Thierry, as he lights a du Maurier.
Around the corner at Planète Libre, one of a handful of smoke-free bars in the trendy Plateau Mont-Royal neighbourhood, a DJ is spinning dance records in a stylishly appointed, upscale room that is easily triple the size of les Verres.
He has an audience of seven, nine if you include the bar staff.
But all that could change on May 31, when the province will officially butt out in the name of public health.
The contrast illustrates the challenge faced by the Quebec government, which says it wants to legislate an end to the province's decades-long addiction to tobacco.
Quebec's tough new anti-smoking law — which will rely, in part, on a snitch line and undercover snoops patrolling restaurants, clubs and taverns — has divided bar owners and prompted a bitter legal challenge.
Peter Sergakis owns a vast empire of strip joints, restaurants and dance clubs, including a huge complex in Montreal's Gay Village, and is the most vocal opponent of the law he says will cripple the business. He insists the issue is a question of fundamental liberties.
"We're talking private places. No one is forcing people to come in, and those who do are older than 18. I'm not saying people should smoke, I just think it should be left up to business owners to decide whether to have a smoking environment and let the market take over," Sergakis says.
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[/HR][FONT face=helvetica,arial size=2]`Alcohol and cigarettes go together. This is a legal product'
Peter Sergakis, Montreal bar owner
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[/HR][/TD][/TR][/TBODY][/TABLE]Though he's a fierce opponent of the ban, Sergakis doesn't smoke, and in any case he says that's not the point.
"Our surveys indicate 85 per cent of our clients are smokers. Alcohol and cigarettes go together. This is a legal product. If the province wants to get rid of smoking, they should ban tobacco as a dangerous drug. But they won't, they get $800 million in taxes," he says.
The ban is less of an issue for restaurant owners, who are already obliged to have no-smoking sections, but the industry still expects a significant dip in business when the law changes. Those protests notwithstanding, the ban has also led to a healthy dose of apathy, which runs deepest with bar patrons themselves.
At Mars-Venus, a "resto-bar" in the ramshackle Centre-Sud neighbourhood, the ban is an annoyance patrons seem willing to tolerate.
"You deal with it," says Marcel Gervais, a middle-aged office worker who was enjoying a late-afternoon drink. "I don't mind going outside. I probably won't smoke as much that way."
Les Verres and Mars-Venus are just two among dozens of neighbourhood bars that will have to banish customers to the sidewalk — or, in some cases, the patio — or face stiff fines.
A spokeswoman for the provincial health department points out that the new law is simply the latest in a series of proposals announced five years ago, and that regardless of the inconvenience, the government has an obligation to ensure public health.
"We have two aims: to protect the health of non-smokers, and reduce the number of young smokers," Dominique Breton says.
The government also disagrees with the doomsday scenario advanced by Sergakis — who predicts 20 per cent of bars will go under — and says studies in other jurisdictions show the effects to be far less dramatic.
The Quebec law essentially mirrors the provisions currently in place in Toronto, although the government isn't planning on using the big stick — suspension of liquor licences — as civic authorities in Ottawa and Vancouver have done.
There are myriad practical niceties associated with the Quebec law, to wit: Officials in hospitals, office towers, schools and other public buildings have had to break out their measuring tapes in order to mark off smoking zones that will have to be a minimum nine metres from public entrances. Employees will still be able to smoke in separately ventilated areas, but only until 2008. (In Ontario, a new law takes effect June 1 that will ban smoking in enclosed public places and workplaces and prohibits separately ventilated smoking rooms, but permits lighting up on roofless patios at bars and restaurants.)
There are roughly 23,000 bars and restaurants in the province — about 5 per cent of which are already smoke-free — and Quebec's health department has only 44 tobacco inspectors to police them, although more will shortly be hired.
The most controversial provision of the new law is a plan to hire euphemistically titled "inspectors' aides" who, in effect, will be plainclothes spies in charge of ferreting out clandestine smokers. That prospect has been a hot topic in Quebec, prompting banner newspaper headlines and an outcry on open-line shows.
Municipal politicians in Montreal, meanwhile, are already sounding the alarm that the city risks becoming a giant ashtray as sidewalk puffers discard their butts.
Sergakis, a bald, burly hospitality industry gadfly who punctuates his speech with wild gesticulations, says the city is even contemplating forcing restaurateurs and bar owners to pay for cleaning up in front of their businesses.
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[/HR][FONT face=helvetica,arial size=2]`I don't mind going outside. I probably won't smoke as much that way'
Marcel Gervais, Montreal office worker
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[/HR][/TD][/TR][/TBODY][/TABLE]"I told them, fine, as long as they lower my property taxes. They have 8,000 blue collar workers to do this stuff, and I pay too much tax already," he says.
Sergakis heads the Union des tenanciers de bars du Québec (UTBQ), a splinter group that broke with the larger Corporation des propriétaires de bars, brasseries et tavernes du Québec last year in order to fight the smoking ban.
The UTBQ, which counts 600 members, hired noted civil rights expert Julius Grey to fight the ban in court. After a pair of thwarted government efforts to have the challenge thrown out, it's expected the case will be heard sometime this summer — assuming the UTBQ doesn't seek an injunction to suspend the ban, an option that is under consideration.
Putting a brake on such a long-standing habit promises to be an expensive proposition.
According to a book by McGill University history professor Jarrett Rudy, the first mass-produced cigarettes rolled off a production line in Quebec in the late 1880s, and in the intervening 120 years, smokers have lustily indulged their nicotine urges, shrouding the province's bars and restaurants in great, billowing clouds of smoke.
Rudy, who has done a social study of smoking in Quebec, says the province's smoking habits — which, like everything else, are steeped in the French-English and nationalist-federalist divides — have persisted, in part, because there aren't enough Protestants in the province to launch an effective temperance movement.
About one in four Quebecers smokes regularly, although the figure topped 50 per cent as recently as the 1950s.
But the habit that has become something of a birthright for Quebecers — who, along with Atlantic Canadians, are the country's heaviest smokers — has officially worn out its welcome.
And so health inspectors will fan out to ensure the province will no longer be known — in the words of newspaper columnist Josh Freed — as Canada's official smoking section.
And there is solid evidence that young people are turning their backs on smoking, although the crowd at les Verres would tend to suggest otherwise.
The key question, given the cultural context and the famously aloof attitude many Quebecers take toward law enforcement, is whether the ban can succeed.
Sergakis thinks smokers will rise up when they see just how restrictive the ban is, and the UTBQ is planning a massive protest for early June.
He says the ban is likely unenforceable — "We make our living from our clients. We aren't going to follow them into the bathroom to tell them not to smoke," he says — and points to New York, Dublin and Toronto as cities where there is widespread clandestine smoking despite public bans.
But that's not a widely held viewpoint.
Word in the bar industry is that the province will be conducting a dry run next week, taking cellphone snapshots of smokers, documenting which bars are havens for smokers, to demonstrate they are on top of things.
"They want us to stool on our clients. That sucks, but what other choice are we going to have if people don't want to go outside?" says a glum Thierry, the bartender at les Verres.[!-- icx_story_end --]
