Greater Victoria’s parks and playgrounds are a step closer to being smoke-free zones.
Members of the Capital Regional District’s planning, transportation and protective services committee are recommending changes to the region’s Clean Air Bylaw that would ban smoking in:
- all public playgrounds and public playing fields;
- designated public spaces in municipalities; and
- all areas of regional parks, electoral area community parks and all municipal parks.
In addition, the buffer zone for smoking near doorways, open windows and air intakes would be increased to seven metres from three metres.
Smoking would still be permitted on foreshore beaches.
Except for the provision that would continue to allow smoking on ocean beaches, the recommendations are remarkably similar to those narrowly defeated by the CRD board last May.
Then, several CRD directors worried that the proposed ban would be too wide-ranging and impossible to enforce, especially in remote areas. They sent staff back to take another look at proposed changes.
Those proposed changes would have allowed smoking to continue in more remote areas of regional parks but for a last-minute amendment made at the committee table.
CRD chief medical health officer Dr. Richard Stanwick said the proposed changes are still significantly different from those defeated last May because beaches aren’t included.
“What we are doing is incremental,” Stanwick said. “What we’re seeing is that they’re still accepting the idea of extending the buffer zone, just as Vancouver and Seattle have. The big difference is we will not be dealing with foreshore beaches. We will only be doing parks, playgrounds and designated areas in the city.”
The CRD led the nation in 1999 when it implemented its Clean Air Bylaw, barring smoking in bars and restaurants. In 2007, it was the first in the province to extend that ban to commercial outdoor patios.
But by banning smoking in parks and playgrounds, the CRD would not be breaking new ground. Several jurisdictions in B.C., including Duncan, Nanaimo, Tofino, Powell River and Greater Vancouver, already ban smoking in parks and on beaches.
