CALGARY—City council voted Monday to take another look at research on fluoride eight years after agreeing to remove it from the city’s water supply.
The decision asks the University of Calgary’s O’Brien Institute for Public Health to deliver a report about community water fluoridation, and doesn’t mean fluoride will return to Calgary’s water supply. But it overwhelmingly reverses a 2016 vote on the same motion proposed by Councillor Diane Colley-Urquhart, which saw a strong majority of councillors vote it down. On Monday, only councillors Sean Chu and Ray Jones were opposed.
Ahead of the vote, Colley-Urquhart said she thinks the 2011 decision to stop fluoridating Calgary’s water was too hasty. At the time, she voted in favour of taking fluoride out.
“What a mistake that was that I went along with that program, but that was then and this is now.”
Mayor Naheed Nenshi called the discussion about fluoride research “one of the strangest debates we’ve ever had at the city.”
Nenshi voted against removing fluoride eight years ago, but he said he didn’t expect council’s opposition to even seeing more information on the impact of that choice.
“I thought that we ought to have done a little more research before making such a big decision,” he said.
Read more:
Calgary councillor revives call for city to take another look at fluoride research
Windsor, Ont. flips back to fluoride — why that’s unlikely to change minds in Calgary
Madeline Smith is a reporter/photographer with Star Calgary. Follow her on Twitter: @meksmith
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