CKNW Editorial
for January 3, 2000

Al Arbuthnot is a pub owner and is president of The BC Liquor Licensee and Retailers Association and he ought to be ashamed of himself. He has, thumping his chest no doubt, told his members not to obey the Workers Compensation Board’s orders for smoke free bars and pubs. He has even urged them to post signs to that effect. He has, in effect, thrown the gauntlet and challenged the authority of the government.

This will, no doubt, make him a hero as all petty tyrants are until they are publicly humiliated and that is what must happen.

Now Mr Arbuthnot and his bottom feeders have had more than two years to challenge the Workers Compensation Board in court. If this WCB ruling is contrary to the rights of him and his smoking clients, that’s what courts are for. There has been no challenge and if there had been it would have failed. I have no doubt that Mr Arbuthnot sought legal advice and got it. A first year law student could have told him he would lose this one.

This is, as the Board has said repeatedly for the past two years and more, a health issue.

They are not smoking in the building in which I work nor the one in which you work unless it’s a restaurant, pub or bar. It was decided some years ago that smoking was bad for the health of those unwillingly inhaling it and there was a complete ban imposed. Why should my health be more important to the state that those who serve tables?

While the matter is a health issue and not one of rights, let’s talk about rights for a moment. What right does someone, to satisfy their own narcotics habit, have to force me to join them? Apart from that, don’t I have the right to enjoy my drink or dinner free from noxious fumes? What right do smokers have to, in effect, take over the food and drink industries in this province to the exclusion of non smokers who care both for their comfort and health.

When two competing rights collide, one must make a decision. In whose favour should that judgment be made – the person who simply wants to breathe the best air available or the person who wishes to satisfy his personal, self inflicted habit, wants to pollute the air around him? I don’t think there’s any contest – any fair minded person would hold for the non smoker.

Now we hear lots of diversionary tactics. Why, it is said, the atmosphere outside the pub is polluted with fossil fuel fumes, why not do something about that? It is an argument that is defeated by a Logic 100 student. Just because country A and Country B have worse civil rights than country C doesn’t entitle country C to continue its own abuses. There are many evils in the world to be cured and we have to do the best we can. We are spending billions to clean up after fossil fuels but in the case of tobacco smoke we don’t have to spend a nickle.

It is said that people won’t go out to eat and drink. Well, if that’s so, perhaps it’s for the best and we’ll see more families together and less carnage on the roads. But experience elsewhere tells us this isn’t so and that in fact the likelihood is that business will improve.

But the argument is an immoral one for the publican is saying that in order for me to make a profit I am entitled to risk the health of those who work for me.

The Workers Compensation Board and the government have now had their authority challenged. They must meet that challenge. They seem to be preferring a soft approach and perhaps that’s best. If it were me, however, I would be actively seeking prosecutions so as to teach those who would flout the law that we don’t operate that way in this country.

The government must see its laws enforced or risk the contempt of all who believe in the rule of law.