The message from the lines that snaked up and around Nathan Phillips Square for the Toronto Street Treats Event was as clear as a bell; we want more food, and we want it cheap from the street. Despite stirrings in City Hall and by Toronto Public Health, our food vendors can’t offer us more than sausages. Dr. Liette Gilbert from the Faculty of Environmental Studies at York University put it perfectly when she asked “Why is the most multicultural city in North America limited to hot dogs?”

She and three other panelists at the Street Food Vending Project Panel Discussion on August 11th all had their unique explanations to the question posed. Each presentation showed hurdles to be overcome if we are ever to chow down on colourful cuisine from a cart.

Sean Basinski, founder of the Street Vending Project in New York City, gave a presentation on street vending in the city that Toronto seems to want desperately to be, or at least to emulate. He worked as a street vendor himself before attending law school. In New York as well as in Toronto, the kinds of challenges that face vendors vary from moratoriums on permits to concrete planters blocking street access.

Dr. Gilbert offered another comparison. Ensenada is a city in Baja, California whose revenue largely stems from tourism. Street vending in Ensenada not only helps tourism through local, family-run businesses, but vendors complement existing food sellers like restaurants rather than competing with them. She pointed out that street vending was one of the few ways for people to join the rapidly expanding service economy without taking a minimum-wage job normally reserved for college students.

So, if an expansion of street vending is so great, why has it stalled? There is a straightforward reason; it is illegal. The by-law restricts sellers almost exclusively to “processed food that looks like a wiener.” The remedy seems obvious - change the law. However, as Dr. Valderde explained, by-laws are not like normal laws. “Exceptions are really the rule” and there is “no legislative coherence” within the tangled mass of by-laws that encompass this city. By-laws are piled on top of one another as time goes on, and “the default setting is prohibition.” Canada’s structure of by-laws is a holdover from medieval times. On top of this, by-laws are usually amended through the efforts of special-interest groups, with one-phrase exceptions added rather than a law being repealed.

The most interesting panelist was the one who did not prepare a presentation. Fred Haywood is the former head of the Street Vendors Association, and has worked as a vendor for 40 years. He owns 4 carts - 3 of the Chinese Food trucks on the U of T St. George campus, and a hot dog stand at the Ferry Docks. As the single non-academic on the panel, he provided the starkest responses. When asked about the current legislative battles, he said “In the past they didn’t play around with us, because we just blocked the city. Six am down the Don at 2 miles per hour. People couldn’t go to work.”

Unfortunately, the three other panelists seemed to be on a different wavelength, discussing cultural roadblocks where Mr. Haywood stated that they could simply go down to the city and pay $200 dollars to get a licence right now. When the other three panelists brought up the permit violations that take place in farmers’ markets, Mr. Haywood told them “I think what you want is a peddler’s permit. The farmers have peddler’s permits.” However, the moratorium on permits enacted by Kyle Rae was universally seen as a major factor.

All this and more keeps street falafel further from our hands. While the “looks like a wiener” law has been recently amended by the Province, don’t expect changes anytime soon. An audience-member who is also a vendor told the panel how she received a letter in the mail from City Hall telling vendors they are “not allowed to change food items.” Despite Michael Filion’s partial success and Torontonians’ gastronomic demand, the city was not consulted before the Province changed the legislation and was left scrambling to try and deal with a situation they were not ready for. Everyone thought the fight to change the legislation would take a long time and the city still has to draft the new by-law, as well as hire appropriate licencing and health inspection personnel. In the meantime (the City’s bylaw is expected to go through in early 2008) anything more exotic than bratwurst will remain relegated to Nathan Phillips Square. As one questioner in the audience put it, “Why is it that we are so anal-retentive in Toronto that after the laws change, we are still worried?”