CKNW Editorial
for September 4, 2001

Let’s talk about the smoking in pubs controversy but first let’s get on the table what this issue is not about.

It’s not about civil liberties and the so-called right of people to smoke. This is an issue about what you can and cannot do in public places. And pubs are public places – everyone over the legal age has an implied invitation to go into bars and pubs subject to the right of the proprietor to demand good conduct and enforce laws about fire safety and the like.

This is not an issue about good manners. The argument that some people don’t like the smell of perfume or after shave lotion, others don’t like the smell of tobacco is just the sort of nonsense one has come to expect from the bottom feeders speaking out for the pub owners.

The issue is not one of part of the community forcing their behaviour on others.

The issue is one and one only – health and safety in the workplace. And since the beginning of the last century we have left that issue, for the most part , to the Workers’ Compensation Board.

The WCB, much maligned in other areas, has done first class work in this regard. When I first started working it was still considered OK to have uninspected elevators, unguarded machinery and virtually unlimited noise and air pollution. No one thought, at American Can, for example, that the stunning din of empty tin cans coming down a number of adjacent lines would affect the hearing of workers. It would never have occurred to management and union alike to demand what are nowadays pretty routine things like ear plugs and eye guards. Over the years the Workers Compensation Board has made the workplace safer and safer. Moreover, in doing so, it has been, for the most part, not interfered with by government any more than one would expect the government to interfere with precautions of care in hospitals.

There is now absolutely no doubt that tobacco maims and kills. That it has different effects on different people is acknowledged. We all have an auntie or grandfather who smoked like a chimney and lived to 100. What we do know is that tobacco smoke presents a very serious health hazard to all who inhale it even though the extent and timing of the results may vary.

There is also no doubt that second hand smoke is a health risk for all who inhale it. One might argue the extent of the risk but the fact that it’s there is scarcely even argued by the tobacco companies – companies which have lied and cheated for years and have deliberately tried to hook youngsters on their products addiction.

This is what the Workers Compensation Board addressed. Is there anyone out there that really believes that breathing second hand health care is not unhealthy?

The pub owners argue that they haven’t had time to take remedial steps, or they can’t afford them, or both. These arguments don’t wash. In terms of WCB investigations they go back at least four years in my recollection, probably longer. Only an idiot would have thought that the WCB wouldn’t act. Moreover, much of the time delay has been by the pub owners own actions in continuing to fight for the right to harm their employees health. The money argument doesn’t wash for a couple of reasons. First, it has been clearly demonstrated that where the ban on smoking is universal, attendance in drinking establishments increases. But even if that weren’t so, no one has the right to make their profits at the expense of their employees’ health. If they can’t make money except by damaging the health of those who work for them, they should be out of business be it a pub owner with a smoke filled pub or a marginal plant with unsafe machinery.

It is argued by those in some parts of BC that they simply won’t obey the law. Do we really have to deal with that? I suppose we do so let’s make it short. We live in a country governed by the rule of law. Those who disobey the law must be punished. If they refuse still to obey the law, they must be put out of business.

It is said by some that if the employees don’t want to work in a smoke-filled atmosphere, they can go somewhere else. That argument went out with the coal mines of the 1890s when owners said if you don’t like the safety measures, or lack of them in my mine, go get a job somewhere else. Our society, at least most of it, has developed to the point where we say that worked safety must be, as best possible guaranteed and no worker should have his job at risk because he refuses to tolerate an unsafe workplace.

I have spoken about what this issue is not – this is what it is. It’s a raw political pay-off to the friends of this government who helped pay for its election. Let’s take that to it’s logical conclusion – this government, the head of which I will be speaking to in a few minutes, has put the pocketbooks of its friends ahead of the safety of British Columbia workers.

Can they do this? Can they overturn the decision of an independent process that has been with us for over 100 years?

We know they can … for it was the man the Liberals loved to hate, David Zirnhelt, the former NDP minister, who reminded us that government could do as it pleased.

How many times over the years have the Liberals thrown those words back at Zirnhelt and the NDP? Wasn’t this one of the reasons you elected the Liberals and threw out the NDP … their arrogance?

Well, I suppose one is not supposed to say unkind things about governments riding high in the polls but that’s never stopped me before and it won’t now. Besides, a wise man, perhaps even wiser than our premier, once observed that all it takes to change cheers into jeers is the passage of a little time.

This government – and I put is straight – is prepared to risk the health of your sons and daughters in order to pay back Vince Campbell for his associations political good will.

This moratorium has, make no mistake about it, been bought and paid for.