Ban cosmetic pesticides now

Due to the revised Municipality Act, all P.E.I. municipalities now have an obligation, not a privilege, to safeguard residents’ health and must therefore and immediately ban hazardous cosmetic pesticide spraying within their jurisdiction.

The health industry is a source of unbiased informed advice — the pesticide industry is not.

The province has the mandate to safeguard Islanders’ health, and it has the mandate to write the Municipality Act such that a portion of that responsibility is transferred to the municipalities. This is not for the municipalities to give back.

This mandate received by the municipalities from the Province is not an optional privilege, but a binding liability and responsibility.

All municipalities are now forced by the Province to safeguard their residents’ health, at least until the Province decides to take back this mandate.

So, all you elected municipal peoples’ representatives, don’t keep staring at one another as if you don’t know what to do. Residents already know what they want you to do, and they told you loud and clear.

Don’t be intimidated by the pesticide lobby.

Don’t listen to the pesticide industry. Municipalities are responsible to the people, not to the corporations. Economy is not more important than health!

Write a limited bylaw, prohibiting all cosmetic application of hazardous inorganic chemicals within your allowed jurisdiction — limited until the province takes over with a unified, revised pesticide ban providewide.

If trusted and elected municipal leaders cannot do that job, then they are not qualified to be in office or they may be rightly seen as corrupt. Karl Hengst Summerside