Smoking is a common topic for green publications for the environmental consequences of the habit. Treehugger just wrote about the environmental issues in a very comprehensive post.

Health concerns are probably the most obvious and talked about issue with smoking these days. In my home province of Ontario, smoking is banned almost everywhere. Restaurants, bars, clubs, malls, work places, etc. Bars used to be able to have “smoking rooms” if they were adequately ventilated, but even these are not allowed anymore. Even smoking on restaurant patios falls under some regulation (you can smoke if not covered, but cannot if covered… it’s a bit confusing). Even casinos are smoke-free.

The purpose of this is of course to protect non-smokers (the workers especially) from inhaling second-hand smoke. Makes sense. It also helps nurture a cleaner environment.

But, there is apparently a few places that you can smoke inside at work. And. you you will be surprised (maybe you won’t actually) where. None other than the cornerstone of Canadian media. The CBC. The National Post writes:

Despite Ontario’s strict prohibition on smoking in the workplace, employees at the CBC’s downtown Toronto headquarters are legally lighting up inside two smoking lounges outfitted with plush sofas and ashtrays, a Global News investigation has found.

Hidden cameras captured smokers puffing away and ashtrays filled with cigarette butts inside the public broadcaster’s Toronto building, and the CBC says its workers can smoke in similar designated rooms at its locations in Montreal, Moncton, St. John’s, Nfld., and Saint John, N.B.

Apparently, the this is all legal because of a loophole in federal law that allows smoking and the CBC is a “federally regulated workplace.” Hmmm. The CBC building in Toronto is in Ontario but smoking is allowed…

What does the CBC say?

A spokesperson for the CBC told Global News the smoking rooms have existed for years, and it would be too expensive to decommission them now.