The City of Québec wants to ban the use of pesticides for aesthetic purposes on its territory. Their elected officials will have to decide on draft regulations in the spring aimed at restricting the outdoor use of products considered to be the most dangerous to health and the environment.
Posted on January 23rd
The full list of products the city plans to ban by 2024 has not yet been released.
However, neonicotinoid insecticides – dubbed “bee-killing” pesticides – would be banned “at all times,” according to a document presented to councilors Monday afternoon during a city council plenary session.
The herbicide glyphosate – sold under the trade name Roundup – is also banned, with the exception of exceptional cases. Biopesticides with lower toxicity remain permitted.
“You have to understand that we are not waging a war on the turf,” assured Geneviève C-Lévesque, director of the City of Quebec’s environmental monitoring department, during the meeting. “We prefer a healthy turf with a good root system that is resilient to drought, new pests or climate change than a completely dry and decimated turf,” she added.
liberated agriculture
However, the 109 agricultural holdings in the agglomeration are exempt from the statute. The nine golf courses in the area must submit a pesticide reduction plan.
“The statute is not intended to be an end in itself, but a means to encourage behavioral change among our citizens,” explained Florence Boudreau-Pineault, environmental adviser at the Department for Spatial Planning and Development.
“We will have communication tools that will allow us to carry out prevention and education with our citizens. There will also be coercive measures that can be applied in case of breach of the regulations. So it’s safe to say that as a regulation it’s ambitious, but at the same time we think we have the tools to be able to apply it,” she added.
The City of Quebec is following in the footsteps of Montreal and Laval, which have enacted similar regulations in recent years. In the spring of 2021, the city of Laval banned glyphosate, the top-selling herbicide in the world and in Quebec.
A few months later, Montreal banned the use of 36 pesticides in addition to selling them on store shelves. Glyphosate was part of the lot.
In Quebec, nearly 160 municipalities regulate the use of pesticides in one way or another.
Pesticide sales in urban areas accounted for 18% of total pesticide sales in Quebec in 2020, according to the latest figures released by Québec’s Department of the Environment. Pesticides for domestic use, ie products sold to individuals, accounted for 73% of these sales.