St. Stephen tables smoking ban bylaw - May. 20, 2010
Kathy Bockus/Courier
St. Stephen Coun. Gavin Toumishey displays a plastic bag of cigarette butts he collected from Chocolate Park before Monday night’s council meeting.
BY KATHY BOCKUS
kathy@stcroixcourier.ca
ST. STEPHEN – A motion proposing a bylaw prohibiting smoking in town parks has been tabled indefinitely.
In a short discussion on the motion Monday evening, Coun. Gavin Toumishey caught his fellow councillors by surprise when he produced a plastic Zip Lock bag full of an undetermined number of cigarette butts he said he gathered Monday in Chocolate Park.
Toumishey, who proposed the new bylaw a few months ago, had just finished telling the council he was able to collect 63 cigarette butts in Chocolate Park the previous Monday in no time at all and without going out of his way.
“Today, I picked these up,” he said, producing the bag of butts from a large envelope.
“There is a problem,” he said. “People who use our park need to respect our park.”
Toumishey said he has been approached by parents who frequent the town’s parks with their children.
While he acknowledged smokers have rights too, smoking in public places, like town parks, “has an impact on individuals who don’t enjoy recreation near smokers.”
“The welfare of their children is directly impacted by the smokers,” he stated. Not only is Toumishey concerned about the affect of secondhand cigarette smoke and the potential negative role model the smokers present, but the cigarette butts pose a health hazard to small children as well as pets who may ingest them.
Toumishey stated the town’s solicitor has done some research on the proposed bylaw and has unfortunately discovered there are no provincial statutes that can be used to enforce such a bylaw.
That creates the opportunity for the town and its residents to approach the government to create an avenue to open the door for a smoking ban bylaw.
Coun. Robert Tinker suggested the Municipalities Act, designed in the 1960s, was an old and outdated document that did not address issues facing communities today.
He said the Town of St. Andrews used a portion of the Act relating to promoting health, safety and welfare, to pass a no pesticides bylaw in 2006.
Tinker said passing a bylaw banning smoking in public parks “would be a legal challenge for sure.”
For more on this issue see the editorial in the Weekend Courier
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