June 16, 2003
The dandelion is now the official flower of the City of Toronto. How did the dreaded dandelion jump up to official flower status? With yet another municipal council bylaw signed on May 22. The prized roses and cherished cherry blossoms may enjoy official status in other cities, but here in Toronto the dandelion is no longer a weed, but Flower of Emblem.
And the dandelion made it to the top even as Toronto struggles with the CNN cast image of SARS capital of North America.
Municipal councils in North America now have an open door policy for environmental and animal rights activists among favoured single interest groups.
Pesticide alarmist groups such as PANNA (The Pesticide Action Network of North America) are as busy as bumblebees in the month of June. They campaign, non-stop, for bans and restrictions on commonly used pesticides and claim, without scientific proof, that "Pesticides are hazardous to human health and the environment, undermine local and global food security, and threaten agricultural biodiversity."
Sounds ominous enough, but is it true?
The Heartland Institute’s James Taylor has observed that banning ornamental pesticides used at parks and schools will expose people to higher levels of risk from disease-carrying pests, such as roaches and mosquitoes, or to stinging insects that can trigger allergic responses, such as fire ants and wasps.
Toronto’s version of PANNA is the Toronto Environmental Alliance (TEA), who cheered council on during the Great Pesticide Ban Debate.
Environmental and animal rights activists carry a lot of clout on the left wing-dominated Toronto City Council. The same breed of activists banned the circus from coming to town in 1996. A Canadian court judge reversed that decision when he ruled that the city had overstepped its bounds in banning the circus.
Incredibly, some of the same people who banned the circus in 1993 were back in the council chamber to ban pesticides in 2003: circus ban firebrand Holly Penfound, who then ran the non-profit Zoocheck organization, while she was executive assistant to Coun. Peter Tabuns, current toxic campaigner for Greenpeace Canada, and, of course, former health board chairman Tabuns himself, who is now executive director of Greenpeace Canada. Holly Penfound is now the genetic engineering campaign coordinator for Greenpeace Canada.
Though proponents of pesticide bans imply that routine exposures to low levels of pesticides are harmful, evidence does not back them up. Canada’s Fraser Institute recently published Misconceptions about the Causes of Cancer, in which noted UC Berkeley toxicologists Lois Gold and Bruce Ames point out that synthetic chemicals, such as pesticides, are no more toxic than natural chemicals made by the plants we consume every day.
According to that study, it’s clear that pesticide exposures do not pose a significant risk when compared to the many other chemicals, both natural and synthetic, that we encounter every day. A single sleeping pill poses a cancer risk that is over 150 million times higher than routine exposure to pesticide residues.
The focus of public attention on extremely remote, hypothetical risks consumes public resources that could be better used elsewhere. It also distracts people from addressing the real risk-reducing actions that require some willpower: not smoking, not drinking alcohol excessively, and eating enough fresh fruit and vegetables to reduce their vulnerability to cancer and other illness.
But wait a minute, you might ask, isn’t the use of pesticides a federal rather than municipal issue?
Before, during, and after the implementation of the pesticide ban by Toronto City Council, products have remained--and will remain--on the shelves of home and garden centres.
Facts support that sales of pesticides in Halifax, Nova Scotia--which has had a total ban on their use--have remained steady. Urban residents of cities everywhere are adherents to human nature, bylaws notwithstanding, they simply resort to their surreptitious use.
As an example of the intensity of Toronto council’s reliance on single interest groups, its unpopular pesticide ban came in the middle of an election campaign.
In celebrating the success of the pesticide bylaw, this is the boast of Coun. Joe Mihevc, chairman of the local board of health: "I think the residents of the City of Toronto should be proud that we are now in the forefront of pesticide legislation in Ontario and Canada."
Folks here are still waiting for Mihevc to weigh in on SARS and West Nile Virus.
Perhaps the last word here belongs to Landscape Ontario executive director Tony DiGiovanni: "We are not against regulation, however we are against a municipality-by-municipality approach driven by politics and influence instead of science, reason and balance.
"(Pesticide) bylaws will cost cities hundreds of thousands of dollars, money that should be spent on more pressing issues, such as SARS and West Nile Virus."
Meanwhile, while the dandelion has reached official flower status in Toronto, the tourists won’t be here to see it.
Dandelion wine, anyone?
Canada Free Press founding editor Most recent by Judi McLeod is an award-winning journalist with 30 years experience in the print media. Her work has appeared on Newsmax.com, Drudge Report, Foxnews.com, Glenn Beck. Judi can be reached at: judi@canadafreepress.com
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