One of the most bizarre little side-niches — maybe a mini-niche? — that I’ve developed in my career has been monitoring occasional stories of the City of Toronto, sometimes aided by the province of Ontario, finding new and exciting ways to take a business owner’s dream and ruthlessly smash it into dust. The absolute apex example of this was Toronto’s catastrophic à la Cart program, a fiasco I have written about here before, but there have been many others. Some of the weirdest and most oft-recurring themes of these stories is that the city (and, again, sometimes the province) seems to have an almost pathological aversion to the notion of someone purchasing some food or a beverage in a public place and then consuming it. Other cities all over the world have thriving coffee cultures and food-truck or other “street meat” options. This has included a recent wave of food-truck expansion across many North American cities. But Toronto really, really hums and haws before it allows anyone to open or operate such a business — assuming the business is allowed to open or operate at all.
The latest item for my list of such absurdities came to me courtesy of BlogTO, which covers local stories in my hometown. It told the story of Anastasiia Alieksieiehuk, a woman who left war-torn Ukraine two years ago for the safety of Toronto. She spoke no English and had to work many jobs to support herself (in Ukraine, Alieksieiehuk was an artist, as per BlogTO’s report). Missing Europe’s superior café culture — and gosh, is it ever superior — Alieksieiehuk chose to open a small coffee and baked-goods trailer. She operated it at first in Etobicoke, which is where the problems began.
Alieksieiehuk was repeatedly ticketed by city officials, with the tickets running up into the thousands of dollars. The problem is that Alieksieiehuk’s business operates out of a trailer. A trailer is not, itself, a motorized vehicle — it depends on another motorized vehicle for towing. (Alieksieiehuk does have a vehicle available to tow it; it’s just that it’s a legally separate vehicle.) Because of this, Alieksieiehuk’s coffee business does not technically fit within the framework of Toronto’s regulations governing food trucks. So as far as the city is concerned, she’s just taking up public space.
The world, the country, the province, and the city face major challenges right now. This isn’t and shouldn’t be at the top of anyone’s list of priorities. But I’m using my weekly column here at TVO Today to advocate for Alieksieiehuk anyway. For two reasons.
First, because this story absolutely enrages me. This woman has sought safety in our country while her own country is bombarded and ravaged by a relentless enemy bent on its subjugation. She has found a way to contribute to Canada and Toronto by providing a service that is popular and in demand. She is making our lives just a tiny bit better and supporting herself. This ought to be, by any rational metric, a success story. It would take an awfully oblivious institution populated by heartless pencil-pushers to somehow turn this into a bad-news story, which is where the City of Toronto came in. Nice work, you wonderful geniuses, you. While again granting that this isn’t the most important issue facing us today, I would be so bold as to suggest to you that this is still worth getting mad about. There is something fundamentally unjust about this. What the hell are we doing smothering this woman in inflexible bureaucracy? She deserves our praise, admiration, and gratitude, not this inane [expletive deleted].
And the second reason, though it might seem a stretch, is that I’m not totally convinced this story isn’t, in its own way, related to our bigger problems. If we live in a time and place where our governments are so big, so stubborn, and so out of touch with reality that they don’t understand that going after this woman is bad morally, politically, and as a matter of policy, then that is an awfully good signal that we need much better government, much less government, or both. Toronto and the world are all struggling with real issues right now, and repeatedly ticketing this woman because her business is technically outside the regulations is a sign that those real issues are not getting the attention they deserve. The next time I hear about anything going wrong at the City of Toronto — literally anything — I’m going to think of the time and energy that has been wasted ticketing the nice lady selling the hot drinks. And I invite all 3 million of my fellow Torontonians to join me in that — and demand better.
Alieksieiehuk has relocated her business from Etobicoke to just outside Robarts Library at the University of Toronto. This week, on a cold and rainy afternoon, my daughter and I went downtown and walked the campus a bit. We took in the sight of the long row of food trucks down St. George Street and went to Alieksieiehuk’s coffee trailer. It was beautiful. It was much more elegant than the other food trucks; Alieksieiehuk had surrounded it with floral displays and wrapped it in little twinkling lights. It was a bright spot amid the gloomy drizzle, and my daughter and I got in line to buy a drink. Minutes later, we were on our way, drinks in hand, and the other people in line — a half dozen or so — inched forward to get their turn at Alieksieiehuk’s till.
My tea was delicious — flavourful and piping hot. Alieksieiehuk herself was gracious and spoke remarkably good English for someone who just began learning it two years ago. It was, all in, a highlight of the day. I’m not often on campus these days, but I’ll make a point of stopping by as long as she remains open and I’m in the area.
Alieksieiehuk is petitioning the city to amend the regulations so that a trailer like hers can operate fully legally inside the regulatory regime. I wish her well in that regard — may she succeed and find relief! But this is still a blinking red warning light. The city absolutely has a vested interest in assuring that public roads and sidewalks are not impeded and that any location selling food and drinks operates at the necessary level of cleanliness and safety. Regulations and enforcement along those lines are necessary and good.
But that’s it. That’s all that’s needed here. Everything beyond that is wasted effort at a time and in a place where we have much more pressing issues and cannot afford to be distracted by such trivial nonsense. Yet this urge to overregulate and crush entrepreneurs who are making their communities better seems so deeply ingrained in Toronto’s bureaucratic DNA that I really don’t think there’s much hope of sanity prevailing. Frankly, this issue is a much better target for Doug Ford’s heavy-handed intervention than bike lanes. And if Ontario decides to impose some sanity on the city on this score, Toronto will deserve it.
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