Vancouver City Council creates silly restaurant legislation

Last month Vancouver City Council decided to make a big step forward and modernize the liquor laws but hidden in the details were a few rule changes that were rather silly.  It decided to extend liquor hours from midnight to 1:00am on weekdays and 2:00am on weekends for Vancouver restaurants. However, hidden in there the city council attempted to implement rules, which were ill thought out and would be difficult to monitor. The reaction has been quite vehement. The Just grapes blog did an excellent job of describing them:

1.    The 20% of “food primary” restaurants that have existing licenses to close later than 1am will be required by the City as of January 1st, 2010 to close at 1am on weekdays and 2am on weekends, effectively stripping these Vancouver restaurants, under the new by-laws, will be required to sell as much food as alcohol, and drinks can only be served with a meal. Read this last sentence very carefully because the out-dated 50/50 rule is back to put every single restaurant serving alcohol in contravention of their liquor license on a regular basis. The days of ordering a quality bottle of wine would be over, by law.
3.    The cost of City-issued business licenses will be increased to pay for the bureaucracy required to make these changes. Every food primary restaurant will also be subject to an annual $3.00 fee. The total amount of money this raises, somewhere in the neighborhood of $450,000 annually, will be spent entirely on a new task force of inspectors whose sole mandate will be to enforce the 50/50 law. These ‘food police’ not only have the power they need to fine or suspend Vancouver restaurants by way of their business licenses, but Council have also passed a measure without public consultation allowing them to raise the penalties to $15,000 for a contravention.

Here is the original article.

These changes have created enough of an outcry that the Vancouver council has shelved them.  Councillor Raymond Louie commented about the reaction:

“ we’re very concerned about that, and that’s part of the reason why the bylaw has been pulled, so that staff can review options that are available, and perhaps make an exception or accommodation for those types of situations.”

Despite the fact that these new rules have been stopped for now it still leaves the question of their motivation. It could have been job creation, conservatism, or it has been suggested it was a direct attack on fine wine  (article). It will be difficult to tell until the council comes back with a new take on the legislation and which points they attempt to push through again. Hopefully it was just a poorly thought out scheme, that the local “Mrs. Whitehouse” thought was necessary to protect us from ourselves.