Buskers need to unite under single banner before city talks bylaw, says councillor

by Graham Lanktree
Metro Ottawa
May 22, 2013

Rideau-Vanier city Councillor Mathieu Fleury in a 2012 file photo. | photo source: Metro/Graham Lanktree

The city’s buskers better band together and begin speaking with one voice, or risk never reopening the debate around a controversial ByWard Market bylaw that has left some of them literally voiceless, said Councillor Mathieu Fleury Wednesday.

Early Wednesday morning, one of Fleury’s aids sent off a letter to busking chess champ Daryl Bertrand, who has been slapped with multiple $260 fines for busking without a licence, laying out that the councillor and city “need to have a coordinated approach if we choose to modify the existing ByWard Market bylaw.”

First enforced in 2010, the bylaw requires all buskers in the market to pay a fee of $50 for a license and daily busking permits that start at $10.45 and can cost as much as $200. It also requires them to cycle through a series of 12 stations where they can only perform for one hour.

In recent weeks, Fleury’s aid wrote in the letter, that the Councillor has met with multiple buskers with differing points of view, especially on the issue of voice amplification. Bertrand said that some buskers “are concerned about voice amplification as they play instruments and don’t want any other amplification that could cost them business.”

It is a short-sighted approach, he said, “as more buskers means more people, which means more money.”

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