HALIFAX—After considering the idea of excluding tobacco and medical cannabis from the city’s smoking bylaw, Halifax regional council voted Tuesday to revert to a full ban on smoking or vaping any substance on municipal property.

During the meeting, council considered amendments to the nuisance bylaw originally passed in July. The bylaw bans smoking on all municipal property except for designated smoking areas, which have yet to be announced.

The item made it back to city hall because Councillor Sam Austin had a change of heart. After originally voting in favour of the ban, Austin decided tobacco shouldn’t be included.

“I think what we’ve signed up for here is the worst of all worlds,” Austin said on Tuesday. “It’s a ban that’s not a ban that’s going to require a lot of time, effort and resources, and then at the end of the day, it’s not going to be particularly effective.”

Austin said he did some research and found only one other jurisdiction in Canada was taking the approach of banning all smoking on municipal property: Hampstead, a Montreal suburb.

“Sometimes when you’re the first, it’s because you’re leading the way. Sometimes when you’re the first, it’s because you’ve had a boneheaded idea,” Austin said.

The majority of Austin’s colleagues disagreed.

“I don’t think this is boneheaded at all. I think it’s bold,” said Councillor Lisa Blackburn. “I have no buyer’s remorse whatsoever on the decision we made earlier this summer.”

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Since council passed the bylaw in July, critics have accused it of being heavy-handed with respect to both tobacco and cannabis. Advocates have argued the tobacco portion could criminalize low-income smokers.

The bylaw comes with a fine of between $25 and $2,000, with up to 30 days in jail if the fine goes unpaid. The municipality has said the upper end of the fines would be reserved for repeat offenders, and most would get off with a warning.

But legal staff also pointed to enforcement as the central reason for including tobacco in the ban, arguing that if bylaw officers had to differentiate between tobacco and cannabis, the charges wouldn’t hold up in court.

“Investigators will need to get close enough to the offender to see what they are smoking and to smell the smoke,” a staff report to council said.

“Courts may also require some level of scientific analysis that the substance being smoked was in fact cannabis. If council limits the smoking ban to cannabis, staff are recommending adding a provision in the bylaw that a judge may infer the offender smoked cannabis when a witness describes the substance as cannabis.”

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It’s unclear whether that would’ve worked, given that the municipality has no authority over judges, but the point is now moot.

To enforce the new rules, the municipality is hiring eight new bylaw officers — part of the $3 million in estimated annual costs to the municipality brought on by cannabis legalization.

The municipality says enforcement will be complaint-driven, so there won’t be bylaw officers out patrolling for smokers. That means those officers will have to get to the scene of the smoking in time to enforce the bylaw.

And Councillor Tim Outhit again brought up the fact that bylaw officers are off duty at 8 p.m., meaning police will end up dealing with nighttime complaints.

“Do we want police — when we have people (getting) drugs put into their drinks downtown, alleged assaults in cabs, fights, stabbings, swarmings, all the sorts of things we’re trying to prevent — do we want police worried about if somebody is smoking outside of the designated smoking area?” Outhit asked.

“I’m sorry. It’s not logical. It’s not rational. It’s not fair to the people who have to enforce it.”

The staff report to council on Tuesday provided two alternatives to the status quo: exempt tobacco from the ban or exempt tobacco and medical cannabis.

Austin put forward an amendment to take the second option, but the motion was defeated by a vote of eight to six.

Council eventually voted in favour of the motion as a whole, changing the name of the original bylaw from the Nuisance Bylaw to the Nuisance and Smoking Bylaw and making some minor “housekeeping” tweaks to the language.

The bylaw comes into effect Oct. 1. HRM has ordered 1,000 signs to mark its designated smoking areas.

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