British Columbia’s Capital Region District — an area of about 370,000 people in and around Victoria on Vancouver Island — surprisingly reneged on its promise to form a working group with the tanning community and instead passed a bylaw Wednesday prohibiting anyone under 18 from tanning in a tanning facility.

The indoor tanning community convinced CRD to December to make good on its earlier directive — an order that actually dates back to 2005 — to engage a working group with the Vancouver Island Health Authority to discuss ways to improve VIHA’s proposed bylaw — which while prohibiting teens from tanning actually did less to regulate training and salon protocol than what JCTA has asked for.

JCTA, for 18 months, has told any government in Canada it would support a set of basic protocol regulations and would proactively work with provinces to enact standards. VIHA told the CRD board at the meeting Wednesday and in editorials in the Victoria Times Columnist that the industry opposed regulation — a blatant misrepresentation.

The CRD board in December — upon hearing that other than one preliminary meeting VIHA never met with the industry as directed, and that the tanning community had not been involved in the process — ordered the Jan. 12 meeting to take place so the industry could be heard.

But the meeting turned out to be lip service, as CRD Chairman Geoff Young opened the meeting by directing board members not to ask questions during a lengthy public hearing. “I would ask that we have no questions of the speakers by the board members,” Young said — stifling any question and answer. That format — combined with hours of hyperbolic 5-minute presentations from about three dozen high school students, who had worked with the Canadian Cancer Society and VIHA Medical Officer Dr. Richard Stanwyk — effectively drowned out the 12 five-minute presentations from tanning community speakers and experts who testified in support of the tanning community’s position.

Some of the teens showed videos of melanoma patients — people who had never even tanned in tanning equipment. One video showed high school students repeating a written script asking for CRD to ban tanning — a video that included cheerleading and dancing.

“This was never about the science, and it was never about engaging in meaningful discussion to improve CRD’s bylaw,” JCTA Executive Director Steve Gilroy said. “We’re disappointed that CRD did not allow a format of meaningful discussion or direct this to a working group which could have improved the bylaw.”

Many speakers in support of the bylaw mis-stated facts that could not be challenged in the format without discussion.

The bylaw must now be signed by the British Columbia Minister of Healthy Living and Sports to take effect.