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Barbers are flipping their wigs after a judge decided that they can no longer do the work of a hairstylist.

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Cindy Wilson/Telegraph-Journal

Barber Blaine Harris is upset with a judge’s ruling that a barber can't be a hairstylist.

As a result of a judgment issued this month, the Cosmetology Association of New Brunswick has begun revoking the licences of haircutters provincewide, leaving some businesses a hair's breadth from going under.

The dilemma developed after William Grant of the Court of Queens Bench ruled that trimmers and teasers can be only a licensed barber or a stylist, but not both.

"It's like telling an electrician he can't be a carpenter,'' said Leo Daigle of Rothesay, a barber since 1971. "It doesn't make any sense."

The decision places a limit on services that a barber can provide, and makes it illegal for a proprietor with a barber's licence to employ hairstylists. The verdict, issued on Nov. 4, is being appealed by the Registered Barbers Association of New Brunswick.

"Judge Grant has erred,'' said Blaine Harris, who clips manes in a shop on Main Street on the west side of Saint John. A member of the barbers' group, he is party to the appeal. "The main part of every business is cutting hair, but modern-day barbers do more than that. They colour, they style, they shave.

"They should be able to hold as many certificates as they want. The judge's interpretation is wrong."

Responding to a suit filed against the Cosmetology Association by a quartet of barbers, Justice Grant ruled that dual licences are not permitted under provincial law. He rejected the barbers' claim for $1 million in damages, and awarded $3,000 to the Cosmetology Association.

Within days of winning the judgment, Cosmetology Association executive director Gaye Cail began sending letters to barbers, telling them they had to either join her organization or stop stylin'.

"We're not threatening anybody,'' Cail said on Friday. "We're just telling them they can't have two licences."

The situation is enough to curl some barbers' hair.

"I am so worried about it that I haven't been able to sleep at night,'' said one longtime shop owner and hairdresser, fretting over the letter he received. He employs a half-dozen stylists, and is disturbed that, to maintain his business, he has to surrender the barber's licence he has held for more than 20 years. "It doesn't say so specifically, but essentially they are threatening to shut me down."

Grant reached his judgment based on a line in the province's Registered Barbers' Act that states that "a member of the association shall not be considered a cosmetologist under the provisions of the Cosmetology Act,'' which is required to style hair.

Harris says Grant's interpretation is splitting hairs.

"As far as I am concerned, if I am qualified to be a hairstylist under the law one day, why should I not be qualified to be a hairstylist the next?" he said.

The same Barbers' Act defines a barbershop as being "all premises or part thereof wherein is carried on the business of shaving, cutting, clipping with scissors or other appliance, singeing, shampooing, conditioning, colouring, bleaching and tinting the hair; and massaging the neck, shoulders and scalp."

The Act also defines a barber as someone who performs any of those services.

The Cosmetology Act, meanwhile, describes cosmetology as the "cutting, bleaching, colouring, dressing, curling, waving or permanently waving, cleansing or the performance of similar work upon the hair of any person either by hand or by the use of any mechanical application or appliance, or the preparation of wigs and artificial hair pieces."

A class war between barbers and cosmetologists has been evolving since the province established a Cosmetology Act in 1998, and brought barbers and hairdressers under the same umbrella.

In November of 2007, however, the legislature passed the Registered Barbers' Act, which removed barbers from the direction of the Cosmetology Association of New Brunswick. A prior Barbers' Act had been dissolved when the legislature established the Cosmetology Act in 1998.

The Cosmetology Association then took the position that members of the barbers' association could not hold a dual licence and began revoking the licences of some stylists who had joined the barbers' group. The lawsuit that Grant quashed stemmed from that.

"The cosmetologists have been bitter since the barbers split away from their group,'' Harris said. "This is their method of getting back at us."

Harris is confident the barbers will win the appeal, but in the meantime, some haircutters are fretting.

Daigle, who works at a shop at the corner of Rothesay Road and Marr Road, went to school for five years to become a barber and is now cutting hair in his fourth decade. His business includes stylists who technically can't operate under a barbers' licence.

"I think it's crazy,'' said Daigle, who plops customers into a chair that dates to 1910. "This is all I've ever done."

Daigle pointed to the barbers' certificate he got from the Department of Labour in 1971. It hangs on a wall above his chair.

"When I got that, I was told it was good for life,'' he said.

Then he took a more recent licence granted him by the barbers' association off the wall, and studied it.

"I guess this no good now,'' he said. "It's going in the garbage."

Marty Klinkenberg is contributing editor of the Telegraph-Journal. He can be reached at martyklinkenberg@hotmail.com.