Abdul Pirani
A National Assembly special committee on the fluoridation of drinking water will take place on April 22-23 in Quebec City. Council of Canadians Board member and Montreal chapter activist Abdul Pirani will be making our case against the fluoridation of drinking water in his presentation to this committee.
Our formal comments, available in French and English, will include, “On the matter of mandating fluoride be added to public water supplies in the province of Quebec, the Council of Canadians firmly opposed the legislation introduced by Quebec’s previous Liberal government and strongly encourages the present government to repeal this law. …We stand firmly with allies including Eau Secours!, Amis de la Terre, Actions Flour Quebec and Front Commun who also reject the addition of fluoride to drinking water supplies in Quebec.”
Pirani will also highlight, “Across the country, the Council of Canadians, working with our allies and chapters has been active in stopping additions of fluoride to previously unfluoridated water, as well as reversing previously fluoridations. The trend in other parts of the country is for rejection of water fluoridation and we strongly urge the government of Quebec to also reject this ill-advised initiative.”
Blue Planet Project organizer Anil Naidoo has noted, “Most of the world has not embraced water fluoridation and Quebec is currently very closely aligned with Europe in having a very low percentage of fluoridated water. The trend in Europe is to further reduce water fluoridation and this is happening in North America as well. Only English-speaking North America, Australia, New Zealand, Brazil and Venezuela seem to have significant levels of water fluoridation…”
This January, we encouraged people to sign an official petition calling on the National Assembly “to organize a parliamentary committee regarding water fluoridation in order to shed light on the scientific, sanitary, economical and legal aspects of this practice and to rule on the necessity to abolish the water fluoridation program”, http://canadians.org/blog/?p=18710. In December 2010, Eau Secours, Syndicat canadien de la fonction publique (SCFP, or CUPE in Quebec), and the Council of Canadians announced the launch of the French-language Blue Communities Project guidebook in Quebec which calls for a stop to the fluoridation of drinking water, http://canadians.org/francais/eau/documents/communitaire-bleu.pdf. And in April 2010, the Council of Canadians began working with La Coalition Eau Secours! to oppose the Charest government’s plans to increase the fluoridation of drinking water in Quebec from about 3 per cent to 50 per cent, http://canadians.org/blog/?p=2904.
More on our concerns about the fluoridation of drinking water can be read at http://canadians.org/fluoride.
