H2O: Ideas & Action for Canada's Water

The Lake Winnipeg Foundation has decided to add its voice to the growing list of organizations and individuals who support a ban on the use of cosmetic pesticides in Manitoba. The government of Manitoba, in its recently released Tomorrow Now, Manitoba’s Green Plan, is calling on Manitobans to voice their opinion on the issue of the cosmetic pesticide use by October 1, 2012.
Many other provinces including Ontario, Quebec, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island, have already implemented a ban on the cosmetic use of pesticides because of the concern that pesticides can have negative effects on human health. There is also a significant environmental threat in that cosmetic pesticides can impact ground and surface water as well as fish and wildlife.
At this point in time we are not certain of what accumulation of pesticides have entered Lake Winnipeg via run-off from urban lawns but given the serious threat that these cosmetic pesticides pose, we are advocating for the precautionary principle. It is important to note that what we are proposing is to stop the use of these pesticides for reasons that are simply aesthetic, not to stop them in the production of food. It simply doesn’t make sense to create unnecessary threats to human and animal health, wildlife and the environment, in order to create pretty lawns and gardens. Organic lawn care programs offer alternatives.

Lake Winnipeg, photo courtesy of Travel Manitoba

I’m pleased that the Lake Winnipeg Foundation has joined with many other national and provincial organizations like the Canadian Cancer Society, The Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment, and the David Suzuki Foundation to name just a few, who are trying to put a stop to a practice that is so clearly unnecessary and poses so many threats to the health of our natural world and all of us who depend on it.