Edmontonians are proud of their river valley. It’s listed as the largest urban park in North America, said to be 22 times larger than New York’s famous Central Park. But this year, thanks to an incomprehensibly stupid decision by Edmonton City council, it will be a lot less enjoyable in that massive parkland — and anywhere outdoors in Edmonton..With little fanfare and minimal debate, Edmonton’s city council voted 9-4 to kill off a mosquito control program that operated successfully since 1974..Given that the vast majority of these council members are ideological hard-core leftists, their decision shouldn’t come as a complete shock. Trust me, even with this program — that sprayed mosquito larvae in standing water — Edmonton can be very buggy when warm weather finally arrives..One memorable summer when we’d had significant rain, skeeters were so thick you could barely venture outside. I remember being driven off a golf course by clouds of the blood-thirsty flying vermin. Edmontonians were slapping themselves silly. There was so much standing water, crews spraying by helicopter had a hard time keeping up..I cringe to think how thick the bugs would have been that summer if there hadn’t been any mosquito spraying..Yet, instead of sticking to tried-and-true measures, these out-of-touch council members decided to instead use the $507,000, dedicated to spraying mosquito larvae, for a public educational program as well as for biological pest control. The rookie left-wing councilor who proposed the motion, Michael Janz, was quoted as saying “nature is healing,” and getting more bats and dragonflies on the job will make everything hunky dory. (I’m sure Mikey believes in unicorns and and fairy dust too, but I can’t say for sure.) While lefties never met a tax dollar they didn’t want to spend, Janz said cutting the spraying program would allow them “to spend the money … more responsibly going forward.”.He said an education program would encourage people to address the mosquito problem themselves by making sure to dry any standing water on their property..Oh and if bugs are bad … residents could use electric fans to blow the skeeters away, he suggested. “Hopefully, after a while, through these interventions, I think we won’t even need to be spending it all because nature will have healed, and the excess prey, the mosquitoes right now that we have, one day the predators will catch up to them,” Janz said. “It will take some adjustments, but nature is healing.”.That’s a big “hopefully.” I can’t wait until he tells that to irate taxpayers who call him after they’re eaten alive by mosquitos this summer. I expect his office phone lines to be jammed with irate callers as soon as people attending Edmonton’s summer festivals get ravaged by the bloodthirsty suckers..Yet another rookie councilor, Erin Rutherford, agreed with the concept of natural pest control even though the spraying the city has long undertaken use pesticides approved by Health Canada and recommended by the World Health Organization. “While the research showed very clearly that this (spraying program) isn’t that harmful, I think we always have to look from a whole ecosystem perspective,” Rutherford said “I do worry about the biodiversity crisis we are in right now and the amount of bird life, for example, that rely on the (mosquito) larvae to survive.” .Oh yes, we should operate with an abundance of caution! Karens of the world unite!.Only four of 13 council members showed any common sense on this issue. Mayor Amarjeet Sohi and councilors Sarah Hamilton, Tim Cartmell and Karen Principe (a good Karen) voted against getting rid of the spraying program. Kudos to them..But I give only conditional kudos to Sohi. He’s a long-time city councilor who went on to become a Liberal cabinet minister. I served with Sohi both on Edmonton city council and in the House of Commons where I sat across from him as a Conservative member of Parliament.Sohi knows what you have to do to win votes on important issues. He’s squarely to blame for not getting the majority of council onside on this core service issue..He should remember that merely cutting the mosquito budget once caused a lot of controversy when we served on council from 2010 to 2013. That mosquito budget was later increased, I recall. This council should learn a lesson from history..My predication? This foolish decision by city councilors will come back to bite them big-time — as soon as Edmontonians begin getting eaten alive this summer..If you think proper mosquito control is a core service and Edmonton city council has let you down, don’t bitch to your neighbour. Call or email your city councilor. Google their contact info online. Trust me, if enough people do that, this decision can and will be reversed. I’ll be sending this opinion column to the whole lot of them..Kerry Diotte is a long-time journalist and former city councilor who was a Conservative MP from 2015-2021.kerry@kerrydiotte.com
