Starting this spring, the cost to rent a booth for vendors selling non-local goods in the Byward market will double â to $900 per month.
Ottawa’s city council has passed a bylaw that will raise operating costs for vendors who do not sell local goods in the Byward and Parkdale markets.
The bylaw will charge vendors who don’t sell local goods $900 rent per month – double what those who sell local products will pay.
The changes will also reorganize the market into two distinct sections, with the prime spots going to local producers.
Starting in the spring, the corner of Byward Market Square and George Street, which now hosts a variety of merchants selling different goods, will be home exclusively to vendors who sell produce. The city will move merchants who sell other products to York Street, a less busy part of the market.
Supporters of the city’s bylaw say it will return the market to its original purpose as a farmer's market.
Vendors opposed to the changes, however, say the bylaw discriminates against those who don’t sell local produce.
City Coun. Diane Holmes says her support for the changes is a personal one.
“I live in Centretown and I can walk to the market very easily,” she says.
“All of Centretown used to shop in the Byward market and so did I. It was our main outdoor fresh food location. I don’t know anybody who shops in the Byward Market [now] they’ve all gone to Lansdowne, myself included.”
Holmes says the Lansdowne Farmers Market offers customers a variety of what she considers healthier, local, produce grown within a 100-mile radius, something the Byward and Parkdale markets no longer do.
The markets changed from a mostly farmers market to, what some call a flea market 13 years ago when the Superior Court ruled the city did not
have the power to regulate the markets.
The city could not treat vendors differently based on where their products came from or what they sold, the Court said.
The decision came after the city tried to enforce a bylaw similar to the one passed recently, but was taken to court by vendors who opposed the motion.
While the bylaw failed 13 years ago, it is possible now because the Ontario government passed legislation last year granting municipalities more control over their markets.
Nicole Gravel-Blauer, a community dietician at the Centretown Community Health Centre, says many of her clients look for local goods and are often angry when they find out many Byward Market products aren’t local.
Gravel-Blauer says it is important for many of her clients to have fresh, local fruits and vegetables.
“Consumers are asking for local, and I feel this is not just a phase,” Gravel-Blauer says.
Holmes says fresh, local food has become more popular in the last few years.
Vendors who do not sell local goods however, say they feel the city is unfairly targeting them.
Berhe Hagos, a vendor who sells imported hats and scarves says he’s been in the Byward Market for 13 years.
He says stalls like his attract more customers to the market and by charging merchants rent double that of local producers, and forcing them to York Street, the city is making it
impossible for them to run their businesses.
Hagos says he and other vendors are considering not returning to the market next year.
But supporters say the changes will attract vendors who sell local goods, especially merchants who moved to Lansdowne after
the city lost its bid to regulate the market.
“We cannot loose the jam that is in the middle of the Byward market, holding it all together,” Holmes says. “I’ve been waiting for 13 years for this bylaw and I’m delighted that we got the legislation from the province that allows us to get back to what is a local-based, produce-based market.”