Hamilton just discovered its bylaw booze ban in parks is not on the books
Hamilton just realized it has mistakenly enforced a non-existent bylaw booze ban in parks since 2005.
So, if a bylaw officer ticketed you any time in the last 16 years for tippling on a park bench or having a picnic beer on the municipal green, red-faced city officials would like to give your money back.
A report on the bylaw bungle recommends getting an alcohol ban back on the books as soon as possible - even as other Canadian cities experiment with allowing drinking in public parks. (As in deliberately, rather than accidentally.)
The news also follows past criticism of the city by Tory Premier Doug Ford for cracking down on drinking in parks during the pandemic. If a couple guys are sitting there, quietly on a picnic bench having a cold beer, who cares?" he said during a COVID briefing in 2020, later adding, Give us a break. Just a little bit of a break."
To be clear, Hamilton police can - and do - ticket people for offences under provincial liquor laws, including drinking in nonlicensed public places like municipal parks. During the first pandemic spring, for example, police handed out 369 tickets related to public drinking.
Any tickets handed out by police under provincial liquor laws remain valid.
But it turns out Hamilton has been separately enforcing pre-2005 parks bylaw rules that banned the possession, consumption or sale of alcohol in parks without specific permits. Those provisions were repealed in 2005 for reasons that remain unclear," according to a report to public works committee.
The belated realization prompted the city to search its records for citizens wrongly ticketed under the bylaw. No tickets were found prior to 2017 and only one, for $105, in that year. But in 2021, bylaw officers handed out 72 booze-in-parks tickets totalling about $5,400 - or $75 per ticket.
Only 44 of those people actually paid their tickets - so the city is preparing to send out 44 letters offering a refund, potentially a grand total of $3,939.50. You'll have two years to claim your refund.
Councillors will now have to vote to put the municipal booze ban provisions back into the bylaw - so until or if that happens, you won't be ticketed by bylaw just for having a beer in your local park. Remember: Hamilton police can still ticket you under provincial law.
The earliest the repealed bylaw rules can be put back into place is at city council next week.
The City of Toronto, meanwhile, has been debating a pilot project to allow drinking in certain circumstances in municipal parks - and such experiments are already underway in Edmonton and Vancouver.
Just before the pandemic, Ontario also specifically gave cities the option of allowing drinking in parks - a point the premier emphasized in scolding Hamilton for its pandemic crackdown.
The city report, however, suggests reinstituting a specific municipal ban because drinking in parks often" leads to vandalism, strewn garbage, fights and other dangerous and reckless behaviour." And while police can charge park tipplers under provincial law, such enforcement is a relatively low priority.
It wouldn't hurt for the city to look at the pros and cons of changing its policy, suggested Coun. John-Paul Danko, who asked city staff to report back on best practices" in other communities Monday.
Danko suggested residents are already surreptitiously having a quiet drink during a picnic in Gage Park or dog-walking stroll in Sam Lawrence Park. There could be places where it fits," he said.
Matthew Van Dongen is a transportation and environment reporter at for The Spectator. mvandongen@thespec.com