At the height of social distancing and other restrictions related to the COVID-19 pandemic, many Canadian cities rolled out temporary patio policies, loosening rules and waiving fees for bars and restaurants looking to seat more customers outdoors.
These programs brought a glimmer of hope — and revenue — to businesses that had been forced to shut their doors, allowing them to offer more outdoor dining to citizens eager to leave their houses.
Now, as cities transition into their new normal post-pandemic, experts say patios need better across-the-board standardization to make them more accessible, as well as more predictable for the businesses still trying to make up for lost sales.
“It was a thing that became an obvious no-brainer for better streets and better neighbourhoods and better cities,” said city planning consultant Brent Toderian, who is also the former chief planner for Vancouver.
“So it’s remarkable how bad a job we’ve done.”
Trolley 5 was one of Calgary’s first restaurants to open an expanded sidewalk patio. (Helen Pike/CBC)
When the pandemic hit, restaurants and bars shut their doors, resorting to takeout services or going dark altogether, and the extended patios were a lifeline for many businesses.
“The pandemic was a bit of a forced pilot program,” said James DiPaolo, a senior associate at Urban Strategies.
“Cities were looking at creative ways to adapt, and they were forced to do it on a much faster timetable than they’re used to.”
Three years later, the transition to the new normal looks different everywhere you look, with some municipalities making temporary changes permanent while others roll them back.
But advocates have been sounding the alarm about the accessibility concerns of sidewalk and curbside patios for several years, and say that any permanent solution needs to have appropriate accessibility standards.
Meanwhile, businesses are looking for predictability as they make plans and investments for the future, but in some cities have been complaining about delays and dismissals in the permitting process.
Many businesses in Toronto are seeing patio permits that were previously approved during pandemic years now denied for a variety of reasons, or are facing delays in getting permits even as summer rolls forward, said Tracy Macgregor, vice-president of Ontario for Restaurants Canada.
“That’s where the frustration is coming in, because they can’t hit the ground running with these patios,” she said.
The city’s CafeTO program is an example of the “red tape” that can occur if policies aren’t designed well, said Toderian.
“When you walk around Montreal, you see a lot more (patios). So that certainly suggests that their system is more effective,” he said.
“It’s part of their general attitude towards the public realm, which is better than any other city in North America.”
When the pandemic hit, restaurants and bars shut their doors resorting to takeout services or going dark altogether. (Helen Pike/CBC)
In some cases the pandemic patios actually improved accessibility, said Maayan Ziv, founder and CEO of AccessNow.
For example, businesses that perhaps didn’t have accessible indoor seating before were able to do so with the additional outdoor space, she said.
But in other cases they introduced new barriers, she said.
“No public money should be going to the installation of new barriers, no permits or authorizations should be granted to businesses that have not considered the accessible access points to these spaces.”
Over time, urban settings are becoming less accessible, said David Lepofsky, chair of the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act Alliance.
The pandemic patio programs are just one example, he said, noting that early iterations often made pedestrians walk into the road.
Changes announced early on in 2023 to Toronto’s program include “uniform platforms for accessibility,” according to the city, along with a transition period to make required changesand grant programs for businesses and BIAs.
Lepofsky said as each municipality looks for a permanent solution, there’s a patchwork situation developing, even though the duty to accommodate transcends city borders.
“If you leave it to each municipality to reinvent the accessibility wheel, they either won’t, or they risk getting it wrong. And you’re burdening people with disabilities in each community to have to fight about this,” said Lepofsky, who wants to see provincial accessibility standards for outdoor seating areas.
Widespread, uniform accessibility benefits everyone, not only people with disabilities, said Lepofsky, including increasing the base of potential customers for businesses.
“We just need to ensure that there is an accessibility plan built into all of these projects,” said Ziv. That could be as simple as ensuring an easy path of access or educating and training restaurant staff, she said.
“I’d like to see that widely adopted across every municipality, as opposed to a case-by-case basis,” said Ziv.
A patio on Stephen Avenue in downtown Calgary in 2022. That year, the city made its extended patio program permanent. (David Bell/CBC)
Toderian agreed that patio programs should be approached in a standardized way, instead of a program that requires case-by-case reviews of patio designs as some do.
“It’s no wonder these things aren’t getting done faster,” he said.
Both Calgary and Edmonton appear to have clear and helpful guidelines for their patios, said DiPaolo, helping businesses figure out what their patio should look like instead of “starting from scratch in every case.”
In Calgary, the city is yet again waiving fees for patio permits this year. In 2022 it made its extended patio program permanent, with permits valid for three years, according to the city website.
Along 17th Avenue, a popular stretch of bars and restaurants, a local business group decided to pitch in to streamline patio season.
The 17th Ave Business Improvement Area last year invested in building an extended boardwalk system that runs alongside the sidewalks, explained executive director Tulene Steistol.
Seating is set up on the sidewalks in front of businesses, while pedestrians walk on the boardwalk without having to watch for servers and patrons crossing between the restaurant and the patio seating.
This has made patios safer for diners and pedestrians and more attractive for businesses, said Steiestol, noting that the BIA made changes after feedback from the city’s accessibility committee.
Steiestol thinks municipalities should help pay for projects like this, helping them become more widespread.
“We’ve had municipalities coming down, and their own teams from other cities taking note of what we’ve done,” she said.
Some communities have taken pandemic patios several steps further, implementing pedestrian-only street times and bringing in live music and public art, said DiPaolo.
“My hope as a planner is that … the success of these programs can be leveraged for more permanent improvements to the public realm,” he said.
“Instead of building makeshift patios into the street during the summer months, maybe we talk about expanding the public boulevard, where these issues of accessibility and mobility and safety are actually built into the design of the streetscape rather than addressed through the permitting process that happens every year.”
VANCOUVER – Contract negotiations resume today in Vancouver in a labour dispute that has paralyzed container cargo shipping at British Columbia’s ports since Monday.
The BC Maritime Employers Association and International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 514 are scheduled to meet for the next three days in mediated talks to try to break a deadlock in negotiations.
The union, which represents more than 700 longshore supervisors at ports, including Vancouver, Prince Rupert and Nanaimo, has been without a contract since March last year.
The latest talks come after employers locked out workers in response to what it said was “strike activity” by union members.
The start of the lockout was then followed by several days of no engagement between the two parties, prompting federal Labour Minister Steven MacKinnon to speak with leaders on both sides, asking them to restart talks.
MacKinnon had said that the talks were “progressing at an insufficient pace, indicating a concerning absence of urgency from the parties involved” — a sentiment echoed by several business groups across Canada.
In a joint letter, more than 100 organizations, including the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, Business Council of Canada and associations representing industries from automotive and fertilizer to retail and mining, urged the government to do whatever it takes to end the work stoppage.
“While we acknowledge efforts to continue with mediation, parties have not been able to come to a negotiated agreement,” the letter says. “So, the federal government must take decisive action, using every tool at its disposal to resolve this dispute and limit the damage caused by this disruption.
“We simply cannot afford to once again put Canadian businesses at risk, which in turn puts Canadian livelihoods at risk.”
In the meantime, the union says it has filed a complaint to the Canada Industrial Relations Board against the employers, alleging the association threatened to pull existing conditions out of the last contract in direct contact with its members.
“The BCMEA is trying to undermine the union by attempting to turn members against its democratically elected leadership and bargaining committee — despite the fact that the BCMEA knows full well we received a 96 per cent mandate to take job action if needed,” union president Frank Morena said in a statement.
The employers have responded by calling the complaint “another meritless claim,” adding the final offer to the union that includes a 19.2 per cent wage increase over a four-year term remains on the table.
“The final offer has been on the table for over a week and represents a fair and balanced proposal for employees, and if accepted would end this dispute,” the employers’ statement says. “The offer does not require any concessions from the union.”
The union says the offer does not address the key issue of staffing requirement at the terminals as the port introduces more automation to cargo loading and unloading, which could potentially require fewer workers to operate than older systems.
The Port of Vancouver is the largest in Canada and has seen a number of labour disruptions, including two instances involving the rail and grain storage sectors earlier this year.
A 13-day strike by another group of workers at the port last year resulted in the disruption of a significant amount of shipping and trade.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 9, 2024.
The Royal Canadian Legion says a new partnership with e-commerce giant Amazon is helping boost its veterans’ fund, and will hopefully expand its donor base in the digital world.
Since the Oct. 25 launch of its Amazon.ca storefront, the legion says it has received nearly 10,000 orders for poppies.
Online shoppers can order lapel poppies on Amazon in exchange for donations or buy items such as “We Remember” lawn signs, Remembrance Day pins and other accessories, with all proceeds going to the legion’s Poppy Trust Fund for Canadian veterans and their families.
Nujma Bond, the legion’s national spokesperson, said the organization sees this move as keeping up with modern purchasing habits.
“As the world around us evolves we have been looking at different ways to distribute poppies and to make it easier for people to access them,” she said in an interview.
“This is definitely a way to reach a wider number of Canadians of all ages. And certainly younger Canadians are much more active on the web, on social media in general, so we’re also engaging in that way.”
Al Plume, a member of a legion branch in Trenton, Ont., said the online store can also help with outreach to veterans who are far from home.
“For veterans that are overseas and are away, (or) can’t get to a store they can order them online, it’s Amazon.” Plume said.
Plume spent 35 years in the military with the Royal Engineers, and retired eight years ago. He said making sure veterans are looked after is his passion.
“I’ve seen the struggles that our veterans have had with Veterans Affairs … and that’s why I got involved, with making sure that the people get to them and help the veterans with their paperwork.”
But the message about the Amazon storefront didn’t appear to reach all of the legion’s locations, with volunteers at Branch 179 on Vancouver’s Commercial Drive saying they hadn’t heard about the online push.
Holly Paddon, the branch’s poppy campaign co-ordinator and bartender, said the Amazon partnership never came up in meetings with other legion volunteers and officials.
“I work at the legion, I work with the Vancouver poppy office and I go to the meetings for the Vancouver poppy campaign — which includes all the legions in Vancouver — and not once has this been mentioned,” she said.
Paddon said the initiative is a great idea, but she would like to have known more about it.
The legion also sells a larger collection of items at poppystore.ca.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 9, 2024.
