Municipal Election Debates - Ottawa
Nice, when election time comes around you can review the past actions, activities, deliberations and failures of the current town council and decide on that basis whether they deserve an additional go-around as they so feverishly claim they do, or whether it would be more expedient and intelligent to toss them out and vote in a new group to bungle the straightforward.There is one issue in particular that really grabs me, an I know it's an issue that a whole lot of other people are concerned with, not only in the city where I reside, but elsewhere in this country. In fact, many municipalities, including the city of Toronto, and the city of Montreal, have passed by-laws severely restricting and sometimes outright banning the use of cosmetic pesticides. As a matter of fact the entire Province of Quebec has banned the use of pesticides for cosmetic purposes.
In recognition of the fact that deadly chemicals used to eradicate living creatures cannot possibly be good for all living creatures. In recognition of the fact that any process using the term "cide" in it means this is a harbinger of death. We bring death to unwanted flora through the use of herbicides, and to unwanted fauna by spraying pesticides. The chemicals in these mixtures are sprayed on lawns but they also are sprayed into the ambient air and carried away into the atmosphere.
Where they affect not only the targetted area but bystanders, neighbours, children, animals. What is this preoccupation about the perfect lawn anyway? Because people are so focussed on something of such negligible value they are willing to risk the health of people around them, including their own children, their own family pets. People appear to be either totally ignorant of the fallout of their actions, or simply unwilling to admit they're behaving in a truly anti-social manner, or they're damned if they'll let someone else tell them what they can do with their property.
People will not believe that the use of these chemical agents are completely unnecessary in the attainment and management of good lawns. Mostly because there's a bit of effort involved in ensuring that the grass grows nice and green and thick and healthy without the use of pesticides. And they'd much prefer taking the perceived "easy" way out. It's their property, it's their right, and they're not doing any harm to anyone, they assert. The thing of it is why do local politicians permit this to happen?
All the more so when researchers, though reluctant to state definitively cause and effect, still have found direct links between exposure to such chemicals and later onset of cancer. In 2004 the Ontario College of Family Physicians released a report on the effects of pesticides and they found disturbing links between pesticide use and human health pathology - such as birth defects, neurological problems and cancer onset.
The Canadian Cancer Society has voiced its objection to the permissibility within municipalities vis-a-vis this topic. Before the last municipal election held in the Ottawa area where I live, I telephoned one of the local candidates and asked his position. He needed more data, something like real proof behind the issue and until then he wouldn't support a ban. A recent report issued by an environmental group gave failing grades to most of the current municipal council on the environment, citing the very issue of pesticide use.
The International Agency for Research on Cancer issued a report stating that some substances in pesticides are known to be probable agents causing cancer. If there is any doubt at all would that not mitigate against the use of cosmetic use of such substances? Ottawa council defeated two motions brought before them to ban the use of pesticides, last year. 220 other municipalities in Canada have brought forward a ban on their use, but not the nation's capital.
Finally, the Ontario branch of the Cancer Society has decided to issue a questionnaire to all candidates running for council, asking for support of a ban on pesticide use. It's time the city faced realities to undertake the responsibility to protect the wider population from the petulant ownership-imperatives of the lawn-loving sociopaths among us.
posted by Pieface @ Thursday, October 19, 2006
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