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Municipal officials have opted to end water fluoridation on the island of Montreal, following a petition from a resident who claims he has the support of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
A council representing Montreal and the island's suburban municipalities decided Thursday evening to stop using fluoride in the water of six West Island suburbs that have been treating their water since the 1950s.
The city's water department had recommended ending fluoridation earlier this year, partly because of costs, although public health officials support the practice as an effective way to reduce tooth decay.
But mayors of the affected suburbs say they only learned of the city's plan in September, years after the department began studying the issue. They say residents were not consulted and the process was undemocratic.
Before Thursday's vote, Montreal city councilor Maja Vodanovic said the city wants drinking water supplies to be uniform across the island. “The city of Montreal has deemed this decision coherent,” she said. “We do it in the best interest of everyone.”
Citizen petition
In a March 2024 report, the water department said it began reconsidering the use of fluoride in the water supply after receiving a “citizen petition” in 2020. That petition was launched by resident Ray Coelho, who says his campaign was endorsed by Kennedy.
In a telephone interview after the council's decision, Coelho said he spoke to Kennedy a few times and that Kennedy congratulated him by text message after the city's plan became public last month. “He gave me moral support, which is good,” he said.
Coelho, a student at Concordia University in Montreal, said he was pleased with the outcome of Thursday's council meeting. “I'm very happy,” he said. “It's great, I can put my energy and time into other things.”
Kennedy, a vaccine skeptic appointed by US President-elect Donald Trump as his health secretary, claims fluoride is an “industrial waste” linked to a range of health problems and has said the Trump administration will remove the mineral. from the US public water supply.
Coelho ran in the 2019 federal election for the now-defunct Canadian Nationalist Party, a far-right party that was deregistered by Elections Canada in 2022.
He says he is no longer affiliated with the party and called his candidacy a 'mistake'.
Only two water treatment plants in the Montreal area still add fluoride to their supply. The city says maintaining the necessary equipment becomes more expensive and much of the fluoride is lost. What are the health benefits of fluoride and what are the risks?
Mayors are sounding the alarm
“I really wonder what kind of due diligence Montreal does when they receive petitions,” said Heidi Ektvedt, mayor of Baie d'Urfé, one of the six affected suburbs.
She said Coelho “seems to be inspired by conspiracy theories,” and that many residents of her suburb are “furious” about the city's plan. “What happens in the United States should not enter into decision-making in our country,” she said.
Georges Bourelle, mayor of Beaconsfield, called Coelho a “far-right extremist” and said he “doesn't give much credibility to petitions.” None of the affected communities, including Beaconsfield, have ever requested fluoride be removed from the water, he said.
Only two of Montreal's six water treatment plants use fluoride. These two factories serve five percent of the island population in six suburbs on Montreal's West Island. There is only one other municipality in Quebec that puts fluoride in the water.
In its report, the water department says it costs about $100,000 a year to fluoridate the water at the two treatment plants. The city also points to problems with the supply of fluoridation products in recent years, which have led to closures of the two plants and health concerns for workers who handle the chemicals.
During the council meeting, Vodanovic said people drink only one percent of the drinking water produced by the city, while the rest is used for other purposes. “We don't think something like fluoride should be put in 100 percent of the water,” she said.
The report acknowledges that major health organizations, including the World Health Organization, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Health Canada, support the use of fluoride in drinking water.
Montreal's Regional Directorate of Public Health told the department in November 2023 that it is in favor of fluoridation. But the report says health considerations are “beyond the scope of the water department's expertise.”
Bourelle and Ektvedt said they only learned about the city's plan to stop using fluoride in their communities' water at a meeting in September — four years after the water department received Coelho's petition. Ektvedt said she was “speechless” when she heard of the recommendation.
“It's an undemocratic decision by the city of Montreal,” Bourelle said. “It shows a total lack of respect for the affected population.”
He said the affected suburbs have only a small percentage of voting rights in the council and called the process “a blatant example of abuse of power by the majority in the agglomeration council.”
Public health sees benefits from fluoride
In an interview Friday morning, Dr. Mylène Drouin, Montreal's public health director, reiterated that her office is in favor of water fluoridation. In fact, Drouin said her recommendation to the city was to add fluoride to drinking water islandwide.
She said the benefits are especially evident for low-income families, who have less access to dental care.
“It is one of the preventative universal programs that is the most efficient and cost-effective,” she told Radio-Canada. More than one matin.
In a statement Friday, a spokesperson for the city of Montreal said the “decision to end fluoridation is based on a rigorous analysis by our water experts” and not on a petition.
“This is not a political decision, but objective and based on the expertise of the water service,” says city spokesperson Béatrice Saulnier-Yelle.
