Can Toronto get any more ridiculous???

Margaret Wente asks why we can't buy pretzels off the street in Toronto....

Once upon a time, I used to think that the job of city government was to fix the potholes, police the streets, clear the snow and pick up the garbage. How wrong I was! Now I know that the most important job of city government is to enforce healthy eating habits among the populace, promote diversity and (perhaps contradictorily) harass hard-working immigrant micro-entrepreneurs until they wonder why they ever moved here.

In case you haven't guessed, I live in Toronto - the only city in the world where grown-ups can't be trusted to choose their own lunch from a street vendor. Until now, street food in Toronto has been restricted to the lowly hot-dog cart. In a city with more ethnic restaurants than you could ever count, the most exotic street food you could get was precooked sausage on a bun.

A couple of years ago, our far-seeing city council resolved to change all that. Nothing to it, really. You just decide how many licences to issue, and make sure the vendors pass food-safety checks.

Okay, so that's how every other city does it. Not us. Here's how we do it. First, the city councillors decided to purchase a fleet of carts and lease them back to the vendors. When the cost ($700,000) proved too prohibitive, they specified an official city-approved cart, which vendors are required to buy for as much as $28,000, not including licences and location fees. (Why does a food cart cost more than a car?)

Would-be vendors were required to submit their food plans, with samples. All submissions were graded on a long list of criteria, including food safety, nutrition, use of local food, business plan, ethnic diversity and home-cooked taste (even though all the food must be produced in commercial kitchens). A taste test was conducted by a four-chef judging panel. Hot dogs and sausages were strictly forbidden, because the city is only interested in "healthy options."

"I have a problem with hot dogs from a health point of view and from a diversity point of view," declared John Filion, who chairs the board of health. He's the city councillor who's in charge of this bold initiative.

In the end, only eight plucky contestants made the grade. Many others were defeated by the high costs of entry and the red tape. For example, the owner of the cart must be on site at least 70 per cent of the time (no conglomerates allowed here!), and any change of menu must be preapproved by the medical officer of health. Absent from the new offerings are such staples as hot pretzels, falafel and the peameal bacon sandwich - Hogtown's signature delicacy.