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UK Against Fluoridation

Tuesday, July 21, 2009

FLUORIDE ACTION NETWORK

FLUORIDE ACTION NETWORK
FAN Bulletin 1084: HUGE victory in Thunder Bay, Ontario
I am off to the UK in a few hours but I had to share this exciting news with you before I left. Last night saw a huge victory in Thunder Bay, Ontario. The public health and dental bureaucrats - at considerable tax payer expense - have been trying very hard for two years to pressurize the officials in Thunder Bay to fluoridate their water. Despite a meeting in which about a dozen "experts" including the notorious Dr. Peter Cooney (The Chief Dental Officer for Canada) took till 2:40 in the morning trying to persuade the councilors that fluoridation was "safe and effective," the councilors said 'No thanks.' Clearly, they are less easily fooled than graduate students participating in the Public Health program at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill (see yesterday's bulletin).
I have always felt that the most likely country to reject fluoridation (of the handful of countries that still engage in this obsolete practice) will be Canada - with, of course, enormous ramifications for the US and the other English speaking fluoridating countries. In my experience fighting incinerator proposals in seven provinces in Canada, I have found Canadian citizens more open minded and less gullible than in America and their decision makers more ready to listen to them.

The promoters of fluoridation in Canada know that the future of this practice in their country is on a knife edge. Montreal has never fluoridated. Quebec City stopped last year after 36 years of fluoridation. Only a handful of communities in British Columbia fluoridate and one of those stopped a few weeks ago. Calgary came within one vote of stopping the practice there and rumblings are being heard in Edmonton.

Meanwhile, Ontario sports one of the best organized and best informed groups of activists in any state or province I have had the pleasure to visit. They have already helped to pull the plugs in three large communities in the Niagara region as well as Dryden. Now they are knocking on the doors of several of the remaining fluoridated cities there: including Hamilton, London, Waterloo, Oakville, Oshawa, Ottawa and Toronto. Their campaign has been greatly helped with resolutions opposing fluoridation from both Canadian Physicians for the Environment (CAPE) and Great lakes United (GLU). The promoters know they are in trouble and that is why Cooney et al. put so much effort into trying to reverse the tide in Thunder Bay. Cooney made countless visits to this city over the last two years. He is reputed to have insisted on seeing each councilor one at a time. Meanwhile, Health Canada maintains that while they support fluoridation by providing information they don't get involved in the political process!

Hearty congratulations to the citizens who provided the other side of this story and the councilors who resisted the pressure (and bullying) of local, provincial and federal health and dental bureaucrats. Now please read the article below, and enjoy this victory on the road to end fluoridation in Ontario, Canada, and the rest of the world.

Paul Connett

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