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Presentation to Protection and
Community Services
April 10, 2006 Thank you once again for the
opportunity to bring information to City Council via the Protection and
Community Services committee. Today I represent a new coalition
of groups known as the Partnership for Pesticide Bylaws which is
working towards cosmetic pesticide bylaws for Winnipeg and
Manitoba. While this group is very new, it is growing quickly and
already includes various labour groups, animal rights organizations,
practitioners, and environmental organizations. All of these
member groups agree on three things: pesticides are harmful,
unnecessary, and avoidable. Today along with this presentation I bring with me several things. I will start with the latest news about pesticide bylaws across the country. I am bringing information also on public opinion polls in Edmonton (which appears to be poised to pass a bylaw). So, as you will see, of the top 10 major cities in Canada, as far as adopting pesticide bylaws is concerned, Winnipeg is in a race for dead last. I hope you will all be able to join us at the Earth Day forum, Pesticides in Children to be held at the University of Winnipeg on April 22, 2006. We very much appreciate that Councillor Benham has agreed to bring greetings from the City and I hope to hear today that a representative from the Province will also be in attendance to introduce our keynote speaker. One of the unspoken goals of the forum is to prepare the community for the debate that is going to accompany the cosmetic pesticide bylaw issue. We have invited internationally reknowned guest speakers to discuss: pesticides are in our bodies, what's that doing to us, and what we can do about it. I invite you all to attend. I also extend a warm invitation to Mr. Klenke and anyone else in the landscape industry who would like to attend our workshops to hear more about how going organic can increase profits. Perhaps more importantly for this committee, I invite you to consider a more private meeting with some of the out-of-town speakers that we have invited for this event, who could be quite frank with this committee or any members of the committee about some of the difficulties and pitfalls to avoid from their experience implementing bylaws in their own communities. They are arriving a day early to do media interviews and I believe the would be happy to share their wisdom with you.* I am told that the current standard to meet is Peterborough whose bylaw you will find here. Of course, you may be interested in the Pesticide Code of Quebec. If you are interested, one of our speakers, the President of the Coalition for Alternatives to Pesticides can tell you more about it on April 21st. As well, this document Pros and cons of different pesticide bylaw choices and our speaker from RATE, Dr. Helen Jones, may be very helpful to you as you consider the best bylaw for Winnipeg. Thanks to Mr. Klenke for bringing up some concerning issues. Pesticides not permitted for use should not be available in stores, for one thing, he's quite right. As well, he alludes to the fact that Manitoba has one of the largest, if not the largest, list of noxious weeds of any province--this is a concerning issue in itself. And of course, we know there are better alternatives than chemicals for dealing with noxious weeds anyway. And last but not least, I am providing a link to an article Why Science Can't Prove Pesticides are safe. In closing, thank you to this committee for bringing this issue to the table. Winnipegers deserve the protection of a pesticide bylaw.
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