Will a pesticide ban ever fly in Burlington, Ontario?

The new council seems to be a tad greener than the old one (by about 2 councilors and a mayor who presents himself as green, but I am not convinced) but I think they are still too suburban to pass such a law.

What do I mean by suburban? I guess I mean spoiled, used to driving everywhere, too rich, too greedy and generally turning a blind eye on the impact of the cities behavior on the environment. It would be lovely to have a mayor and council that had a vision for the future that was green, sustainable and risk taking when it comes to decisions like this. Of course a team like that could also be incredibly dangerous - but sometimes public consultation, more reports and expensive studies can cloud the issue. Lets face it people, tossing chemicals on our lawns is a really dumb thing to do.

Anyway will a bylaw be passed? We will find out on September 25th as the city meets to hear from delegates about the issues. The Sustainable Development committee will be there as will Pesticide Action Burlington and hopefully many other delegates. The word on the street is that any proposed bylaw ban would be rejected 4-3. In fact I heard through second hand information one councilor had suggested that a ban on pesticides would be unhealthy for some of their constituents because of the amount of weeds that would spread. Yeesh.

I hope we can help change their minds.

Lets see if we can generate a comment or two - what do the readers think?

Need more facts:
How about these from the Sierra Club.

"Once you begin to apply pesticides, your lawn can become addicted to chemical treatment. Repeated applications can cause soil to become conditioned, which speeds up degradation of the pesticides. This results in the need to apply increasingly toxic chemicals at more frequent intervals to control the pest problem. Meanwhile, beneficial organisms are killed off, soil can become sterile, and pesticide-resistant insects breed to produce a species able to withstand the toxins and continue eating your grass!"

or David Suzuki:

"Over 6,000 Canadians suffer from acute pesticide poisonings every year. That is one of the findings from research conducted by David Boyd for the David Suzuki Foundation report, Northern Exposure: Acute pesticide poisonings in Canada.

Nearly half of those poisoned by pesticides are children under the age of six—imagine 100 kindergarten classes, or 50 school buses full of young children."

And finally take a look at who has tackled this issue already - looks like Burlington needs to get with the program.

Rank	Municipality	Prov	Population	Pesticide By-law Status
1	Toronto	ON	2 481 494	Adopted
2	Hamilton	ON	490 268	Drafted
3-9	Waterloo Region*	ON	508 000	Adopted
10	London	ON	271 003	Adopted
11	Markham	ON	208 615	Adopted
12	Windsor	ON	208 402	Adopted
13	Vaughan	ON	182 022	Drafted
14	Oakville	ON	144 738	Adopted
15	Guelph	ON	114 943	Adopted
16	Pickering	ON	87 139	Drafted
17	Peterborough	ON	71 445	Adopted
18	New Market	ON	65 788	Adopted
19	North Bay	ON	52 771	Adopted
20	Caledon	ON	50 595	Adopted
21	Georgina	ON	39 263	Adopted
22	Orangeville	ON	25 248	Adopted
23	Thorold	ON	18 048	Adopted
24	Cobourg	ON	17 172	Adopted
25	Collingwood	ON	16 039	Adopted
26	Smith-Ennismore-Lakefield	ON	16 000	Adopted
27	Perth	ON	6 003	Adopted
28	Gananoque	ON	5 167	Adopted
29	Deep river	ON	4 000	Adopted
30	Georgian Bay	ON	2 230	Adopted
31	Cobalt	ON	1 229	Adopted
32	The Archipelago (Parry Sound)	ON	505	Adopted