A local bar owner has been found guilty and fined for breaking the city's smoking bylaw.

Handing down his judgment Tuesday afternoon, territorial court Judge John Faulkner found the proprietor of the Redneck Bar/Joe's Bar, Joe English, guilty of two separate infractions and fined him $500.

The infractions, the court heard, occurred last Feb. 14 and Feb. 17.

'I'm going to impose a fine of $250 on each count,' Faulkner told English; Mike Laforet, the bar owner's representative; and city lawyer Lori Lavoie.

Faulkner said he found English guilty of both infractions because on Feb. 14 and again on Feb. 17, English was standing only a few feet away from people smoking in his Second Avenue bar.

'(On Feb. 14) Mr. English was the bartender and was five to seven feet away from the patron (who was smoking). Again (on Feb. 17), Mr. English was tending bar and stood on the opposite side of the bar (from two smoking patrons),' he said.

Given the small size of the bar and English's close proximity to those who were smoking, and the fact there was a small tin can on the bar being used as an ashtray by the smokers on both occasions, Faulkner said, it could be inferred that English permitted the patrons to smoke.

'Mr. Laforet argued with some ingenuity in effect that simply acquiescing to what was going on did not constitute permission.

'Permitting does not mean encouraging. It simply means he was allowing it to happen by not doing anything to stop it.

'Therefore the charges have been proved in both Feb. 14 and Feb. 17,' he said.

During the proceedings, Laforet argued that English had done everything he could to prevent his patrons from smoking.

He said he didn't feel the prosecution had met the burden of proof to find English guilty.

He told the court that if the officers couldn't force the couple (seen smoking by a bylaw and RCMP officer last Feb. 17) to comply with their requests to identify themselves, he wasn't sure how bylaw officers expected English to force his customers to comply with the smoking bylaw.

Last Feb. 17, bylaw officer Paul Gray told the court, the couple found smoking in English's bar refused to identify themselves.

Gray said in an effort not to 'escalate' the situation, he and the RCMP officer decided not to arrest the couple to gain their identities and did not give them a ticket.

Gray said he saw English standing in close proximity to the couple, as he had last Feb. 14, and opted to give him a ticket for permitting the couple to smoke.

Laforet said he felt case law, including a previous case against the Capital Hotel where the proprietor was acquitted, set a precedence which should be used to acquit English.

Laforet said English had instructed his employees about the bar's no-smoking requirements, a proper system to prevent smoking was in place, and English had taken the required steps to try to prevent people from smoking in his bar.

'The key section in this bylaw is where it says a proprietor shall not permit'; thus, it's confusing,' Laforet said.

English never allowed, permitted, authorized or instructed anyone to smoke, Laforet said, citing dictionary definitions of the word permit.

On the stand, English told the court the lighting in his bar and a visual impairment made it difficult for him to notice what people were doing in his bar at every moment.

The smell of smoke in his bar was always present, English added, because it had been absorbed into the wood ceiling of the establishment from the years of smoking that occurred at the Redneck Bar when it was not illegal to smoke.

His bar has an older clientele, and it's not that easy to convince his customers not to smoke, English added.

He said on both Feb. 14 and Feb. 17, he had told the offending smokers they had to stop and that they would have to leave if they did not.

The 69-year-old English said he did not, nor could he, physically force offending customers to leave.

'We try, but it's not easy,' he said.

Lavoie told the court the city felt that even if English had placed signs around the bar, told people not to smoke and removed all the ashtrays, those actions did not go far enough to satisfy the requirements of the bylaw.

She said if English was having problems gaining compliance, he could have called the RCMP or Bylaw Services, but he did not.

Both Gray and senior bylaw constable Dave Pruden testified they saw English behind the bar at the time the infractions occurred.

Both bylaw constables also said they did not remember seeing any no- smoking signs posted inside the Redneck Bar although they did notice signs on the exterior of the establishment.