Fireworks retailers are hoping business will boom as they push to expand sales from the week before Halloween in a handful of Metro Vancouver cities to the week before the Diwali festival of lights as well.

It was an idea approved by Vancouver City Council five years ago upon recommendation from the city’s fire department at the time, but it never actually took effect.

It’s time for the city to revisit why the city is making exceptions for Halloween, but ignoring a religious and cultural celebration that happens in the weeks around Halloween, said Imtiaz Popat, a community organizer.

“If you live where there is a lot of South Asian people, there are fireworks everywhere. But you’re only allowed to do that on Halloween. Why not make the law inclusive?” he said. “Diwali is huge back in India. How can you have Diwali without fireworks? This is the festival of light."

Vancouver, the District of North Vancouver, West Vancouver and Port Moody all allow fireworks sales with permits before Halloween. In the rest of the Lower Mainland, including Surrey, fireworks sales are banned year-round.

In 2015, the City of Vancouver voted to allow the discharge of fireworks on five evening events per year: New Year’s Eve, Halloween, Lunar New Year, Vaisakhi and Diwali.

In exchange, discharging the fireworks on private property would be banned and people would have to head to a nearby park. This was to avoid fires and property damage that in the years before had destroyed a transit bus and a fireworks store.

But part of the motion required staff to contact the Park Board. There’s nothing in Park Board minutes at that time that show there was any meeting on the proposal, and two Park Board commissioners reached by CTV News of that era said they couldn’t recall any discussion on the proposal.

As a result, the law in Vancouver remains as it has been for about a decade: firework sales are allowed in the week before Halloween with a free permit, with discharge allowed on private property as long as the owner approves.

Green Councillor-elect Pete Fry said he wants to re-examine the balance.

“This is one of those things I’d like to talk to staff about and find out where things went wrong,” he said.

Fry said he wants to avoid making the city a “no fun city," but added that he’d already heard complaints about firework use.

“I’ve heard from residents saying Trout Lake is like a war zone and it’s not even Halloween yet,” he said.

Expanding fireworks sales for another week before Diwali would improve sales, and give people who want to celebrate the festival a chance to do so in a traditional way, said Melanie Sutherland of the Canadian National Fireworks Association.

“Fireworks are used to celebrate cultural events and it’s tradition for Diwali to use them. It’s the celebration of lights,” she said.

In India, the birthplace of Diwali, enormous private fireworks displays have lit up the skies for generations.

Severe toxic smog plunged the capital New Dehli into an air pollution emergency, leading country’s supreme court to ban fireworks in 2017.

The ban has been relaxed for this year, with states now able to pick a few hours in the day that people can use fireworks.

Using fireworks in the celebration is not related to the scripture, said Manu Das of the Hare Krishna temple.

“The people have become more business oriented. They are using the religion in a way they can make money,” Das said. “There’s no need for burning cash in that way.”