Not everyone’s happy with the direction city council is headed when it comes to the sale of fireworks.
The Canadian National Fireworks Association, a group that advocates on behalf of the fireworks industry to promote fair access and safety in the sale and use of fireworks, is disappointed the City of Burnaby plans to ban the sale of fireworks at its Sept. 12 council meeting.
“We were told this council decision would be based on public input, and yet the petition we submitted with hundreds of signatures was not even made public. We’re astounded by the lack of transparency with this council decision,” said Amanda Cameron, executive director of the fireworks association.
Cameron said her organization attempted to take part in the bylaw review process but faced barriers at every turn. It was through media reports in June the group learned the city was considering banning vendors from selling fireworks. Cameron arranged a meeting with the mayor and Burnaby’s acting fire prevention officer in hopes of finding a compromise, but again she hit a roadblock.
“They basically told us council is fed up with the complaints they’re getting, and maybe if we came to the table sooner we could have been more proactive and dealt with this,” Cameron said.
Complaints against fireworks vendors were mostly nuisance-related, including failures to abide by the city’s signage bylaw and not paying fines when bylaws are broken, according to the city.
After her meeting with the mayor and fire department, Cameron met with councillors to see if she could get them to reconsider the ban. Her association, which was founded in 2013, has worked with the City of Vancouver over the past couple of years to help bring fireworks vendors into compliance with city bylaws. She hoped she could do the same in Burnaby with the 24 vendors who sold fireworks last year.
“We had 16 of them sign a commitment letter stating that if council goes ahead and adopts the Canadian National Fireworks Association’s recommendations, they’d commit to following them,” Cameron said.
Included in the recommendations were frameworks to avoid clusters of fireworks shops in small areas and a proposed municipal bond that would be paid when the vendors apply for permits from the city and would be refunded at the end of the season.
“This would be to prevent bylaw infractions as well as alleviate the penalty issue,” Cameron said. “They would get it back, and if they had any bylaw infractions it would automatically be deducted off that deposit.”
But Burnaby didn’t go for it.
Last week, Cameron and members of the association held a press conference asking the city to reconsider moving forward on the bylaw amendment. Despite her efforts, Cameron isn’t holding out hope the city will change its mind before the amendment goes for final reading later this month.
“It’s really unfortunate,” Cameron said.
