A Quebec anti-tobacco group wants a ban on smoking outside bars and restaurants.

The Quebec Council on Tobacco and Health says second-hand smoke is a danger outdoors as well as indoors. (CBC)The Quebec Council on Tobacco and Health is asking the government to extend the indoor smoking ban, in effect since 2006, to outdoor patios.

Second-hand smoke is just as dangerous in close quarters on terraces, when people are sitting just a metre apart, as it is inside, council president Mario Bujold said Wednesday.

"Different research shows that outside tobacco smoke could have a level as high as indoor second-hand smoke concentrations," he said.

Bujold would like the government to change the law next fall, at the same time it's scheduled to review its tobacco policy. He said the smoking ban should also be extended to bus shelters, where people are close together.

The idea is even going over well with some smokers, including Montrealer Josh Bouzaglou.

“It would bother me getting smoke in my face on a terrace or in a bus shelter,” Bouzaglou said.

Peter Sergakis, who represents 700 bar owners in Quebec, thinks it's a bad idea to extend the ban to smoking outdoors.

"They have created second-class citizens with smokers. They put them on the street, and now they're trying to convince the government to disallow them from smoking on the sidewalks or terraces," he said.

"This does not make sense. It's totally undemocratic, and they're going too far."

Sergakis estimates bars in Quebec have lost 25 per cent of their business since the ban on indoor smoking went into effect, and if the ban is extended things will only get worse.

"Totally disastrous. Totally, totally, totally, totally disastrous," he said.Peter Sergakis, president of the Union of Bar Owners of Quebec, shown at his bar in Montreal in May 2006, estimates bars have lost 25 per cent of their business since smoking was banned. (Ian Barrett/Canadian Press)

"Could you imagine? Our customers wait for the summer to go outside and smoke, and now we're going to ban them from smoking on the terrace?"

The anti-tobacco group's concerns about outdoor second-hand smoke outdoors may be exaggerated, agreed Dr. Gaston Ostiguy, director of the Smoking Cessation Clinic at the Montreal Chest Institute.

In the open air, a person is likely to be exposed to second-hand smoke for a very short time, Ostiguy said.

“To say that's it's dangerous for your health, I think that the data is not available to be affirmative on this,” Ostiguy said.

Bujold said the bar owners' fears are exaggerated.

Many people predicted bars and restaurants would be driven out of business when the indoor smoking ban came into effect, he said, but that didn't happen.