BRENDA O’FARRELL
The 1510 West

The fight over the decision to stop fluoridating water in the West Island by the end of 2024 is not over, as Montreal’s top health official last week weighed into the debate, vowing to support suburban mayors looking to overturn the decision.

The move comes as the Montreal Agglomeration council last Thursday voted to ratify the decision to cease fluoridating water at both the Pointe Claire and Dorval water filtration plants, which supply drinking water to the towns of Pointe Claire, Beaconsfield, Kirkland, Baie d’Urfé, parts of Dollard des Ormeaux and Dorval.

“The (Montreal Regional Public Health authority) team remains available to provide support for possible steps in this matter,” said Montreal Public Health Director Mylène Drouin in a letter last week to Baie d’Urfé Mayor Heidi Ektvedt.

Drouin also reiterated her department’s stand on fluoridation: “The Montreal (Regional Public Health authority) specifically recommends continuing the application of the (Programme québécois de fluoration de l’eau potable) and evaluating the feasibility of expanding fluoridation throughout the Montreal region.”

At the moment, only the plants in Pointe Claire and Dorval fluoridate drinking water.

Drouin added that when her department had been asked to weigh in on the matter in the summer of 2022, after the City of Montreal had received a petition asking for an end to fluoridation at the two West Island plants, her office provided an opinion.

“This opinion recommends water fluoridation through the Programme québécois de fluoration de l’eau potable of the Quebec Health Ministry,” Drouin stated, explaining that the assessment was derived in consultation with the Quebec Health Ministry and the National Institute of Public Health of Quebec.

SEE FLUORIDATION, Page 4.

FLUORIDATION: Mayors call to suspend agglo decision

From Page 1

But it was an opinion that was ignored by the Montreal agglomeration, a move that has infuriating Ektvedt and other West Island mayors. In fact, several municipal councils, including the West Island towns that receive water from the Pointe Claire and Dorval plants, have passed motions denouncing the unilateral move to end fluoridation.

Last Thursday, the West Island mayors called on members of the Montreal agglomeration council to postpone ratifying the decision to cease fluoridation until West Islanders were properly consulted on the move.

Lending his voice to this effort, which was ultimately ignored, was former West Island MNA and MP Clifford Lincoln. A resident of Baie d’Urfé, Lincoln reminded members of the agglomeration council that the city of Montreal had signed an agreement when the agglomeration took over management of the Pointe Claire and Dorval water plants that all services were to be maintained until 2028.

“What is the urgency to end the fluoridation without any consultations with the citizens concerned?” Lincoln asked.

In response, Maja Vodanovic, the City of Montreal’s executive committee member responsible for water, said the reason was one of consistency: “The City of Montreal took this decision to be coherent. We do not put fluoride in our water (in Montreal), we don’t intend to put fluoride in our water. We have to be coherent, so we have decided to remove it.”

She said the change was sparked by the need to renovate the Pointe Claire plant, explaining the ceasing of fluoridation is part of that plan.

The decision has been condemned by the Association of Suburban Municipalities.

“Such important decisions should not be made unilaterally without prior consultation with the municipalities concerned,” said Senneville Mayor Julie Brisebois, who is co-chair of the suburban mayors’ coalition in a statement issued last Friday. “This situation reflects a fundamental imbalance in the governance of the Urban Agglomeration of Montreal, where linked cities and their citizens are too often presented with an accomplished fact.”

The Suburban Mayors are calling  for the agglomeration’s decision to be suspended and for an immediate moratorium on any move to end fluoridation of drinking water at the Pointe Claire and Dorval plants to allow for a review  of the decision-making process.

“It’s really not about fluoridation,” Ektvedt explained. “It about public process.”

Elected officials from the West Island were kept in the dark, she said, throughout the discussions to end fluoridation that have taken place in Montreal since 2020.

“In this whole four years nobody even thought to talk to the people who are affected,” Ektvedt said.