Telly's convenience store is a mom and pop operation and something of a fixture for 40 years around here.
Annette and Dick Nardone have been running the shop for the past 15 years.
Now, though, they fear they will lose their livelihood.
It's not the economic slowdown that's hurting them.
What's putting them out of business is the Smoke Free Ontario Act (SFOA), recent legislation aimed at curbing sales to minors.
Let me be clear: I don't smoke. I dislike smoking intensely and I am in no way supporting the practice of selling cigarettes to minors. The Nardones share my views. They don't smoke. They have three teenage daughters and none of them smoke either.
They are doing their utmost to ensure that their employees don't sell to minors -- but that's easier said than done.
They can't be there every minute of every day, says Annette. The store is open every day from 5.30 a. m. to 11 p. m., so the Nardones have to rely often on teenage staff.
Neither Dick nor Annette has ever received a ticket for selling to minors. Unfortunately, their employees have slipped up on occasion, although any time one of their employees has got a ticket, they've been fired on the spot.
The problem is that in the past three years, their employees have been ticketed five times by Brant County health inspectors. Ironically, they have also received commendations from the same units for not selling to minors in a couple of random checks.
Inspectors arrived at the Nardones' door in May, telling them they had to pull all their tobacco products off their shelves within 48 hours.
"We don't have a chance to defend ourselves. We don't have a chance to go to court and tell our side of the story. More importantly, we were never charged," Annette points out.
The impact on sales has been devastating to their business. It's not that they make much on smokes. It's the add-ons like chocolate bars and gum that brings in the cash.
"Our sales are cut in half. We get up every morning at 5 a. m. knowing we are not going to make any money," Annette points out.
Meanwhile, the powers under the act are chilling.
NO APPEAL
They have no appeal, no recourse. No matter who owns the store, it can't be used for the sale of tobacco for a year. So they can't even sell it, unless it's to a different kind of business.
Their 15-year-old daughter got one of the $365 tickets. They made her go to court, plead guilty -- and pay the fine herself. The judge reduced the fine to $120.
One disturbing aspect of the case is Annette ran into one of the health inspectors at a wholesalers -- picking up supplies for a rival store. They feel that's a conflict of interest.
Brant's manager of health inspections says the inspector was simply helping out a friend by picking up the goods.
"The officer was not working for another convenience store," said Jeff Kowal.
"Apparently this individual was friends of a variety store owner and he was doing him a favour, but he was not in the employ of the convenience store or any other convenience store in our community," he said.
Kowal said Telly's was targeted because they had the most tickets in the county.
"Obviously they weren't doing enough," he said.
"To be found guilty or to be fined five times in a three-year period, what else could we do? We had no other recourse," he said.
The Nardones believe there were options such as a $5,000 fine or a prohibition for a lesser time.
A spokesperson for the Ministry of Health Promotion couldn't tell me how many prohibitions there are so far province-wide, but said the SFOA is being enforced consistently across the province.
"An automatic prohibition is imposed on a retailer after careful consideration only where a store has been repeatedly warned about being in contravention of the SFOA," said Gary Wheeler.
DILIGENCE REQUIRED
He said retailers are required to be "diligent" in the training of their staff.
Fair enough.
Not far from Telly's, though, there's a native smoke shack selling cut-rate cigarettes to anyone who shows up.
Reserves are a federal jurisdiction, Kowal pointed out to me. It's not subject to the smoke-free law.
Does it make a mockery of the new legislation? Or is it merely a hypocritical double-standard?
I dunno. You decide.