No Smoking Policy For Halifax

The Mayor, His Worship, Peter Kelly, wants to create his own courts for the Halifax Regional Municipality....yup...he says having their own courts would free up the provincial courts for more important matters. Good thinking Mr Mayor, with the endless stupid bylaws that you and your merry band of councillors like to pass, the latest being the smoking in public places bylaw, or if not passed, at least debated for endless hours and hours....remember the cat bylaw discussions? You will need your own courts to round up all the bylaw breaker outlaws that you will have created by the time your tenure as a municipal government is over, which by the way, could be sooner than later if stuff like this is all you can come up with....

I have no argument with not smoking around children and places where children are, like playgrounds and sports fields, but it's outside, and beaches...what about beaches...smokers are you paying attention here? I was at a local beach this summer and because of my interest in the subject I took note that the majority of the people on the beach where I was...were smoking....I don't think smoking rates have gone down to the degree that some would like us to believe. What has happened is smokers have gone underground in the face of endless persecution and distain from non-smokers....

Smokers are certainly becoming much less of a citizen in this Province than anyone else, despite they pay taxes like everyone else, and more, for that matter, and our city council have really embarked on a social reform platform more than anything. Even you non-smokers, regardless of this law, think about the other laws and where things like this lead...this is not about smoking, this is about that band of councillors telling you how to live...how to live your life....not about smoking or cats or chickens...it's about telling you what you can and cannot do...no mention of what they cannot do, which is pass anything useful.

I hate to keep saying it, but please, remember how the Halifax Harbour still stinks, much worse than any cigarette, and if you don't believe me, go down to the waterfront on a clear mild morning at low tide....take a big deep breath.....suck on it....and remember your hapless Mayor splashing around in the waves at Black Rock Beach...

I still think you should have resigned over the Halifax Harbour Cleanup debacle, which, it seems no one is responsible for...let me rephrase that, no one has taken responsibility for....

So now after you had all the cat owners on edge for seemingly endless days and nights, you've turned to the few hapless smokers left alive, creating a bylaw that gives you the opportunity to pretty much ban smoking outside, somewhat of a coup for the non-smoking fraternity, or at least the zealots among them. Seems like the Mayor of Halifax Regional Municipality and his council would like to make lawbreakers of all of the HRM residents one way or another in order to raise the municipal coffers through the collection of fines...fines which of course can be levied in the new municipal courts that the city fathers and mothers want to create....

Would someone with half a clue please step up and run against this guy in the next election so we can get to the important matters in the municipality!!

As for the non-smokers who will be full of argument over this post....anyone got a light?

Oh yeah..by the way, it's only a policy not a bylaw...whatever that means...