The city of Calgary, Alberta is less than four weeks away from an October 18th plebiscite vote deciding whether to re-introduce fluoridation chemicals -- in this case fluorosilicic acid -- into the public water supply of over 1.3 million residents.
This is the seventh time the issue has been put to a vote since the 1950s; of the six previous votes, four rejected the practice and two favored fluoridation. In 1991, the City Council added the chemical to the water, but twenty years later, in 2011, they voted to remove it. They did so because of the extremely high cost combined with the government’s acknowledgement that children were being overexposed to fluoride on a massive scale, causing a lowering of the recommended fluoride level in water by 40% from 1.2ppm to 0.7ppm.
The dental lobby then spent years bullying the council, as well as misleading the public about a flawed study that claimed to show an increase in dental decay in Calgarians after fluoridation cessation. Their pressure culminated in a 2019 council hearing on water fluoridation to hear public testimony and a review of the science by the O’Brien Institute for Public Health. During that presentation, Dr. William Ghali, MD described the growing science on the cognitive effects of fluoride (see additional testimony). Since this hearing, additional high-quality studies have been published linking fluoride exposure during pregnancy and infancy to neurotoxicity (Riddell 2019, Till 2020, Grandjean 2020, Grandjean 2021, Cantoral 2021). This should have been the end, however, the Council was unwilling to let down the dental-lobby, so they chose to defer the decision to voters.
Safe Water Calgary is leading the campaign to keep fluoridation chemicals out of Calgary’s water. They’re a well-organized and all-volunteer group of local citizens including concerned parents and professionals, led by Dr. Bob Dickson, MD. They've been utilizing both traditional and modern campaign strategies, including distributing yard signs (see photo above), handing out leaflets at local events, dropping door hangers, sending out mail inserts, generating earned media, and creating advertisements for various social media sites, radio, and news outlets. I'd suggest following them on Facebook to see some of their ads and memes.
If you live in Calgary, please vote NO on the plebiscite, tell your friends and family to vote NO, request a lawn sign if you are in a visible location, and please volunteer. They need "all hands on deck" to help with a variety of tasks, so please don't hesitate if you have any extra time between now and October 18th. Just email: safewatercalgary@gmail.com
If you live in Canada, please consider making a donation to help fund more advertising time, as well as the printing of more signs, leaflets, and door hangers. They need to educate hundreds-of-thousands of voters over the next three and a half weeks. Canadians, can you help? DONATE TODAY
A Local Campaign With A Global Impact
While the decision in Calgary will have a direct impact on residents within the city and surrounding communities, there is little doubt that it also have a much broader impact, especially throughout Canada.
Canada’s medical and dental establishments, and especially Health Canada, have been blatantly pro-fluoridation. In spite of that, Canada has been one of the western world's biggest success stories. Many of its cities and communities have stopped fluoridation in the past few decades, and some provinces like British Columbia and Quebec are 98% fluoridation-free.
Now, fluoridationists are working aggressively to reverse our momentum. They convinced the city council in Windsor, Ontario to re-instate fluoridation last year, and weeks ago they lobbied the Regina, Saskatchewan city council behind the scenes to vote for fluoridation with almost no public notice or input. This is about far more than Calgary. If they win here, they will roll out their efforts all over Canada, making it far more difficult for citizens everywhere to keep or make their water safe for all citizens.
New Nationwide Fluoride Free Campaign in Canada
In an effort to unite fluoride-free campaigns and activists from across Canada's ten provinces and three territories, a coalition of 125 veteran organizers, citizens, and professionals announced the formation of a new national nonprofit dedicated to ending fluoridation throughout the country called Fluoride Free Canada.
- Visit Fluoride Free Canada's Website (English / French)
- Sign up for their mailing list
- Follow them on Facebook (English / French)
Their first campaign was a letter sent to Prime Minister Trudeau on September 1st signed by over 150 citizens and professionals calling for him to intervene and take immediate action to protect residents by:
1) Warning pregnant women to avoid ingesting fluoride and warning parents not to use fluoridated water to make up infant formula.
2) Pausing any further promotion of water fluoridation.
3)
Unless they can provide convincing counter-evidence of comparable
quality to the findings discussed above, instituting a total ban on this
practice. (We would note that fluoridation has been virtually ended in
both Quebec and British Columbia, with no validated scientific reports
of any deterioration in tooth care in either province.)
4)
Focusing resources on ways of fighting tooth decay without forcing the
population to ingest fluoride via the water supply without their
informed consent, like most countries (including 97% of Europe) have
successfully done without fluoridation.
Fluoride Free Canada is now asking Canadian residents to join them in educating decision-makers by flooding their inboxes with the letter to Trudeau using an automated online system:
Please join and support this campaign. We must work together to protect the safety of our drinking water against the aggressive lobbying tactics of the dental, insurance, and chemical industries who promote this harmful practice.
Thank you,
Stuart Cooper
Campaign Director
Fluoride Action Network
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