TORONTO - Ontario will ban smoking on all restaurant and bar patios as well as children's playgrounds and publicly owned sports fields starting Jan. 1, 2015.
The Liberals are amending regulations to also ban the sale of tobacco on college and university campuses.
Associate Health Minister Dipika Dameria rejects suggestions the ban on smoking on restaurant and bar patios will hurt those businesses, saying they managed to survive a smoking ban inside their facilities.
She says the changes to the Smoke Free Ontario Act will replace a patchwork of municipal regulations governing smoking on restaurant and bar patios and near playgrounds.
The Liberals also plan to reintroduce legislation that would extend a prohibition on sales of candy and fruit-flavoured tobacco products to youth to a total sales ban.
Statistics show tobacco claims 13,000 lives in Ontario each year and costs the province's health care system an estimated $2.2 billion in direct costs and another $5.3 billion in indirect costs such as lost productivity.
