Who on city council wants to give up 50 per cent of his or her earnings?

That's what a local businessman asked council members at Monday night's meeting.

Who wants to give up half of his or her earnings to make up for the 50-per-cent loss in revenue he has lost as a result of the city's no-smoking bylaw that came into effect Jan. 1, is what Paul Douglas asked soberly.

'It happened to me once on 9/11, and now it is happening to me again.'

Douglas said his Tutchone Air charter company experienced a 30-per-cent increase in business during the year leading up to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Business, however, plummeted 50 per cent following 9/11, and is now sitting at 70 per cent below what it was, he told city council.

Douglas said he opened The Coffee Bar on Copper Road to diversify. But now, he has been hit with the same 50-per-cent drop in business because of the city's bylaw that prohibits smoking in public places, except for bars.

'What would happen if, tomorrow morning, you were earning 50 per cent less than you are now, every one of you?' he asked. 'You can't experience it, can you?'

Douglas asked if council members would like to contribute 50 per cent of their cheques to help him pay the bills, now that the city's bylaw has siphoned away half his revenue.

The bills, he said, still show up everyday, and with electric heat at The Coffee Bar, one can imagine the bill for the last month.

'So, am I going to get the money?'

Douglas and others in the food service industry have told council it needs to revisit the bylaw immediately.

He said he'd prefer to give business owners the option of whether to make their businesses smoke-free. If required, he said, he would post signs on his business as large as doors to indicate whether it was a smoking area.

As an aside, as though wondering what council is going to do about it, he pointed out to council that a recent study has shown obesity is becoming more of a health concern than cigarette smoking.

Council was told again last night that the bylaw is unfair by discriminating between bars and restaurants. Bars are not slated to go non-smoking until next Jan. 1 but restaurateurs have said now that smoking is banned in their premises, patrons who smoke are now going to the bars to eat.

Council was told last night, for instance, the Yukon Inn is now serving breakfast at 7 a.m. in its bar, which is across the hall from its restaurant, where smoking is not allowed though it is permitted in the bar.

Bonnie Kufelt, owner of the Talisman, who represents numerous restaurants, said a bookkeeper who works for about 15 restaurants in the city has indicated five of them are now in danger of going bankrupt.

The playing field between restaurants and bars has been tilted for too much by council in favour of the bars to the detriment of the restaurant business, she reiterated, as she has done several times over the last month.

Kufelt told council restauranteurs need the situation rectified now. Never in her six years of operating the Talisman has she had to spread the payroll out over the week, but she's had to do so now.

And now, she has learned the smoking bylaw is not scheduled to come back before council until April.