Bar owners object to proposed ban
Shisha bar owners in the city are seeing their livelihoods go up in smoke.
On Wednesday, city council’s community and public services committee proposed a ban on shisha smoking in bars. The committee passed a motion asking administration to prepare amendments to the city’s public places bylaw, which would prohibit shisha and water pipe smoking in public and commercial spaces.
The restrictions would be in alignment with the regulation of tobacco and cannabis use.
“To me it is banning culture and taking away business,” said Ghada Ghazal, owner of Co Co Di Lebanese-Mediterranean restaurant on Jasper Avenue and 114 Street.
Several other shisha bar owners echoed her sentiment.
Ghazal said she is not against rules and regulations, nor is she against having more checks and balances. But she said banning shisha is not fair.
“Everyone knows us for shisha. So people who come here come to eat and smoke shisha. Banning shisha is taking our business away.”
Ghazal and her family opened their restaurant in 2001.
A shisha or hookah, narghile or water pipe is a way of smoking tobacco, which is sometimes mixed with fruit or molasses, through a bowl and hose or tube. The tube ends in a mouthpiece that the smoker uses to inhale the smoke from the substances burned.
City shisha bar owners insist that they do not serve tobacco.
Lily Ghazal, co-owner of Co Co Di, said the shisha they serve is not tobacco but molasses.
On a sunny and warm Thursday, she sat on the patio/sidewalk of her restaurant and smoked grape mint flavoured shisha.
“It’s tobacco-free,” she said. “And it’s a choice. It’s our culture. After dinner, we smoke shisha. You cannot ban culture.”
Mulugeta Tesfay, owner of Nyala Lounge located in the north side of the city, said the proposed ban does not just hit culture but also livelihood.
“It’s not easy,” he said. Omar Hagir, manager of Sahara Palace at 10807 Castle Downs Rd., agreed.
He said his staff of about 40 people also includes a number of Syrian refugees who don’t speak English very well and might lose their living.
“These guys can’t even get jobs at McDonald’s if they tried to,” he said. “People will go on welfare. This is a disaster for everybody.”
Not only is he upset about people losing jobs, Hagir said he wasn’t given a chance to defend hookah bars at the meeting.
He said he received a copy of the document about crime and disorder issues at shisha lounges late Tuesday.
“It was short notice,” he said. “They sent us a document saying it was about violence and when we got there they flipped it to health issues. So we were not even prepared to talk about that.”
The city identified 44 hookah bars. Police were called to 80 violence and disorder occurrences at these locations in 2017 and 20 in 2018, the report said. Violence or disorder was reported in or around 30 of the 44 hookah locations.
“A guy down the street gets charged with stealing a chocolate bar and you also get charged because you’re standing next to him,” Hagir said. “Is that fair?”
At the committee meeting, Palwasha Khan of the Canadian Cancer Society said she researched all the chemicals in shisha smoke, and found little difference between the ones with and without tobacco.
Both are dangerous and have chemicals that have zero tolerance in the occupational health and safety code, she said.
Hagir said shisha bar owners present at the meeting weren’t allowed to defend this.
“That was very unfair.” Another issue troubling these owners is that the city has asked them to upgrade the ventilation system in their restaurants, even as the ban looms.
The cost to upgrade it is between $40,000 and $50,000.
If the ban comes into effect, will the city pay back the money spent on the ventilation system, Hagir asked.
Ghazal said since she doesn’t have the required ventilation system at her restaurant, she cannot serve shisha. This has affected her business, she said and it’s fallen by about 40 per cent in the past two weeks.
Tesfay had another question for city officials.
“Why now?” he asked of the ban. Shisha and hookah bars have been in the city for about 20 years, he said.
“You legalize marijuana but you take away hookah bars?”