Health club accommodates smokers

The Frobisher Racquet Club has a comfy smoking room that appears to meet the letter, if not entirely the spirit, of Nunavut’s tough new regulations about smoking in or near work places.

The smoking room is a newly-built, completely enclosed addition to the second-floor premises of the members-only recreation club, separated from the entrance to its restaurant/bar by a short corridor and double doors.

The club’s manager refused to comment on the new smoking room, referring a request for more information to Bronyk Skavinsky, who owns the racquet club building.

However, Skavinsky is on an extended trip out of Iqaluit and is unable to be reached.

But this much is known: Skavinsky, a smoker, is said to have been concerned by the new territorial regulations, which came into effect on May 1.

These clamp down on smoking in or near work places, including bars and restaurants.

Now other clubs and bars in town, including the Royal Canadian Legion, are planning on building similar smoking spaces of their own.

The territory’s Environmental Tobacco Smoke Work Site Regulations, which came into effect on May 1, mean no one is supposed to smoke in or even near an enclosed work site, such as an office building, business, bar or restaurant, where others are on the job.

The Frobisher Racquet Club’s smoking room squeaked by due to a generous interpretation of Section 3 of the Workman’s Safety Act that says employers may permit smoking outside if it’s in an independent structure and the smoke doesn’t come into contact with workers.

“An employer may permit smoking in a designated smoking structure outside an enclosed work site, within a three metre radius of an entrance to or exit from the enclosed work site, if smoke from the structure does not come in contact with workers entering or leaving the enclosed work site,” the act specifies.

Fines for non-compliance with the new regulations are $500 for individuals and $5,000 for businesses.

“We haven’t received any complaints that I’m aware of, otherwise we would have responded to that,” said Imo Adla, acting chief industrial safety officer for the Workman’s Compensation Board in Iqaluit, the agency responsible for enforcing the act.

Meanwhile, the WCB is continuing its inspections of businesses and offices in Iqaluit and other Nunavut communities.

“We do give out no-smoking signs at the same time we’re doing inspections. We are also reminding employers when we do inspections about the regulations. We haven’t found anyone breaking them. It’s more of an education process first,” Adla said.

Last Friday, the provinces of New Brunswick and Manitoba also went

smoke-free, with Saskatchewan going smoke-free on January 1.

Many Canadian cities in other provinces have also enacted smoke-free workplace laws.

“Smoke-free workplace legislation is a matter of respect and dignity for workers,” says Joe Cherner, founder of Bar and Restaurant Employees Advocating Together for a Healthy Environment (BREATHE). “All workers, including office, restaurant, bar, bingo, bowling, casino, tavern, pub, and nightclub workers, deserve a safe, healthy, smoke-free work environment, because tobacco smoke causes cancer, respiratory illness, and heart disease.”