Valerie Blunt vows to sanction companies that continue to sell glyphosate despite a local ban. It considered the situation “unacceptable” and confirmed that fines would be imposed on the rebel in the coming weeks.
Posted at 11:11 a.m.
“To find out that retailers keep selling glyphosate, to me, that’s unacceptable,” the mayor of Montreal said on the sidelines of a press conference on Monday.
She was responding to a Radio Canada report published on Monday, stating that many establishments and hardware stores are still selling this pesticide, which the city has banned since 1Verse Last January, under municipal regulations. However, no inspection has been carried out since then.
Photo by Mike Blake, Reuters archive
Since the beginning of January, there have been in theory 109 products that should be removed from shelves since that date, including a controversial, glyphosate-based news report.
Last August, the initial regulation was announced by the Plant administration, which at the same time banned 36 insecticides on its territory. Since the beginning of January, there are in theory 109 products that should be removed from shelves since that date, including a controversial, glyphosate-based news report.
We do awareness and support work [les commerçants] Because that’s how we operate as management and understand that it’s change. However, at this time, to find out that it is still on the shelves, for me, this is unacceptable. It is a toxic product and has no place on our shelves ”, forged M.me Plant.
She asserts that the city of Montreal will now move to the next stage with institutions. And she insisted on this subject, “We will tell them that it is a regulation, that it is valid and you have to comply, otherwise there will be fines.”
Among the opposition, the mayor of Saint Laurent, Alain D’Souza, denounced “a tactic green wash Coming from Blunt management. “We find the same way of working for the management of screening centers in Montreal: the administration makes good promises, but is not able to carry them out and do the necessary follow-up,” he said.
In 2015, the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer classified pure glyphosate as “possibly a human carcinogen”. Glyphosate is the active ingredient in the herbicide marketed by agrochemical giant Monsanto Bayer, under the name Roundup. The potential carcinogenic effects of glyphosate also led the company to be brought to court.
3.4 million in Soverdi
Mme Plant also announced Monday that it has approved a $3.4 million grant to Soverdi, an organization that specializes in urban greening issues, to plant more than 17,000 trees and 2,000 shrubs in 2022. Last year, this group planted nearly 14,000 trees. The latter must plant 200,000 trees by 2030 for the city, which has set itself a goal of planting 500,000 trees in the next decade, as part of its climate plan.
Montreal says “heatwave prone areas” and eastern Montreal will be a priority this year in particular. “We want to shift the map of the heat islands from red to green,” Soverdi General Manager Malin Anagreos noted, emphasizing that he wants to reverse the trend in several neighborhoods with a “deficit” in agriculture compared to more sectors. wealthy people on the island.
