I see some Vancouver City Hall councillors are getting worried that food trucks put bricks-and-mortar restaurants at a competitive disadvantage and should face more regulation and expense. Sun columnist Pete McMartin kicks the stuffing out of that idea:

In this food fight, oddly, it’s the leftish wheat-growing bike-pedallers of Vision Vancouver that have been standing up for unbridled capitalism. Coun. Heather Deal, who’s been handling the issue for Vision, has said the city has no plans to stop issuing permits, while reminding the restaurateurs that this is a free-market system.

How well I know that. Newspapers operate in a free-market system, but as I recall, not a single politician stepped forward to call for the regulation of, or a moratorium on, the Internet — the proliferation and popularity of which may cause the death of my industry.

What do we hear instead?

Adapt or die. Innovate or perish. Good riddance to the mainstream media, and, oh ya, we’re going to reprint your articles on our website without paying for them. 

That was our “reality check,” to quote Tostenson, and newspapers have had to tread water mightily just to keep afloat.

The Internet is here to stay, and newspapers will have to learn how to live with it or perish.

If City Hall politicians want to help restaurant owners, they shouldn’t do it by punishing food trucks. They should look at their ridiculously expensive property tax scheme and find ways to cut taxes on those bricks and mortar establishments.