Could COVID -19 make our cities more European?
Restaurants advertising takeout alcohol. Large patios spilling onto sidewalks, curb lanes, alleyways and parks. Picnics with a bottle of wine or a cold beer. Food trucks from popular eateries lined up outside busy parks.
None of this would seem out of place in European cities, but for Canadian cities still dealing with a Prohibition hangover from a century ago, it’s been a foreign concept — until COVID- 19 hit and social distancing rules hammered the hospitality industry.
With politicians now scrambling to relax patio regulations and alcohol laws in an effort to help restaurants and bars survive, Canada appears set to conduct a huge social experiment this summer: what happens when we have the same rules around public alcohol consumption that have long been the norm overseas? Will there be significant public safety or health problems? Or will we discover there’s in fact little drawback to liberalizing the laws here?
“COVID has provided the opportunity to do things a little bit differently,” said Linda Buchanan, the mayor of North Vancouver and a former public health nurse. This week the city became the first in British Columbia to allow drinking in some of its parks and plazas, along with a package of other pandemic measures such as more street closures.
Buchanan said 80 per cent of the 53,000 residents in her city live in multi- family buildings and may not have a backyard, so it was important to open up more space while also providing a boost to local restaurants.
“This is about taking a picnic to the park, or getting your takeout and your local craft brew and going to the park with your family and friends and enjoying that in a civilized way,” she said.
“I’m going to treat adults like adults, and I expect that they’re going to do this responsibly. Our bylaws around noise, public intoxication, litter, they don’t go away. Our laws around the age of consumption and drinking and driving don’t go away. Those are still all in place. This is really just about giving people opportunity to get out in the fresh air.”
Across Canada, reforms are quickly being adopted by municipalities in reaction to COVID-19. Quebec City is now allowing alcohol in its large urban parks if accompanied by a meal. Ottawa plans to allow food trucks in parking lots next to city parks, relaxing notoriously tight restrictions normally in place. Toronto says it will fast- track approvals for restaurant and bar patios to expand onto sidewalks, streets and nearby parks.
There are also signs that the changes will turn out to be permanent. In Alberta, the government now allows restaurants to include alcohol in takeout and delivery orders, and likely won’t be changing course. “Although the changes were made during the onset of the pandemic, it is part of government’s broader red tape reduction plan and was expedited to support businesses through these challenging times,” a government spokesperson told Global News last month.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford has also indicated his government may not roll back alcohol takeout rules. “There’s going to be a lot of things, as we say, the new way of doing business — and not only in government, but in the private sector, too,” he said when asked about the new alcohol rules on May 25.
Is it possible we’ll look back on COVID-19 as a turning point in Canada’s alcohol laws?
I’m not naive
to think that people aren’t doing
it already.
“I think that there’s a really good chance of that,” said Dan Malleck, a Brock University health sciences professor who wrote a book on the history of public drinking in post-prohibition Ontario.
Malleck said it also makes sense to him that the new rules are being introduced at a time when people are already having to carefully monitor their behaviour and show they can manage risks.
“We’re keeping six feet away, we’re wearing masks, we’re not, you know, doing things that would physically endanger people,” he said. “And that’s what liquor licensing is all about: making sure people are acting in a responsible way. As long as you’re showing that, then you have the privilege of drinking, right?”
Buchanan said the pandemic is an opportunity to “create really great cities for people.”
“I’m not naive to think that people aren’t doing it already,” she said about having a beer in a park. “But why do people have to feel like they’re doing something wrong?”