Banning garden pesticides a blow to freedom

Should lawn and garden pesticides be banned in B.C.? Well, everybody from Premier Christy Clark to NDP Leader Adrian Dix and the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation is lining up in favour of it. So is the David Suzuki Foundation. It’s become a motherhood issue. And on Monday, Coquitlam City Council voted 7-2 for a bylaw that lets it march in lockstep with those municipalities who’ve already outlawed “cosmetic” pesticide use on the grounds that it might cause cancer and hurt the environment . . . “might” being the operative word.

This will cost the City of Coquitlam, which applies herbicides to its boulevards and medians, thousands of dollars in other treatment methods.

The bylaw also contains a bunch of broad exceptions — broad enough to drive a truck through. It exempts both those who maintain sports fields and those who control pests and weeds that might pose a threat to human or

“The intimation is that the people in the lawncare business are a bunch of cowboys out there wildly dispersing these products willy-nilly, hither and yon, destroying the environment. Nothing could be further from the truth.” — Harv Chapple, Kelowna lawn-care operator

animal health and safety.

Yes, wasps, bees, thistles and clover can be safety hazards.

And “natural” ways of controlling them aren’t necessarily healthy, effective . . . or legal.

One of the Coquitlam councillors who voted against the ban was former reporter Terry O’neill, who explained on his blog that Health Canada “had conducted a major review of cosmetic pesticides and had approved them.”

O’neill said he’d been encouraged repeatedly by environmentalists to study the issue. And he’d done so. Which was why he strongly opposed the bylaw.

He pointed out that, since Ontario banned the use of cosmetic pesticides in 2009, there’d been a reported increase in allergic reactions due to greatly increased weed pollen.

He also noted that, according to Dr. James Lu of Vancouver Coastal Health, the esthetics of urban landscapes had public health value, and that appealing, well-kept neighbourhoods increased people’s sense of safety and well-being.

Besides, why not let homeowners decide for themselves whether to use a particular approved pesticide?

“If I want to spray my roses for aphids or treat my lawn for weeds, I should be able to do so without government interference,” Port Moody resident Bob Chapman said in a Vancouver Sun letter.

No, all the pesticide ban will do is help put good people out of business.

Just ask Harv Chapple, a longtime Kelowna lawn-care operator who employs up to 18 people. He accuses the premier and other busybodies of allowing emotion to crush science.

“The intimation is that the people in the lawn-care business are a bunch of cowboys out there wildly dispersing these products willynilly, hither and yon, destroying the environment,” Chapple told me.

“Nothing could be further from the truth.”

The B.C. government, meanwhile, has an all-party committee studying the issue. As of last month, it had received more than 8,700 submissions, the most ever by a B.C. parliamentary committee.

I’d bet most favour a provincewide, pesticide-sales ban.

However, I worry when the likes of Clark, Dix and Suzuki get together on anything. It invariably means rising costs and reduced freedoms.

In this case, the supposed cure will undoubtedly be worse than the alleged disease. That’s the real poison we’re talking about here.