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A new rule banning the sale and use of hundreds of pesticides in Quebec has many lawn-loving perfectionists turning to Ontario for the illicit goods.
One garden centre operator in Ottawa says customers from as far as Quebec City are turning up at his doorstep looking to buy.
“Most of them are buying usually what they would use themselves, but there are people who are buying more than they need for the areas that they are describing to me,” said Neill Ritchie of Ritchie Seed and Feed Garden Centre in Ottawa.
Ritchie speculated that people are either stocking up to save themselves a return trip, or they’re buying for like-minded gardeners trying to get rid of pesky weeds and bugs.
This April, the government of Quebec banned the sale of products containing 20 chemicals contained in as many as 200 pesticides and insecticide products, many of them perennial favourites among gardeners in la belle province.
Quebec’s Pesticides Management Code and Pesticides Act are touted the most restrictive laws of their kind in North America.
Ritchie, for one, believes the sweeping ban may simply drive the Quebec market for pesticides underground.
“And when it goes underground, you can’t control it, you can’t monitor it,” he said.
Marie-France Pelletier, a horticulture information specialist with the Montreal Botanical Garden, said she worries about the improper use or storage of pesticides by people stockpiling the chemicals.
“I’m quite concerned about the way people will use the product once it’s in their place.”
Pelletier said pesticides are not necessarily a prerequisite for a good-looking lawn.
“The Montreal Botanical Garden has a great website that contains a lot of information on that, on lawn care, on pesticide-free gardening, on pests and disease,” she said.
The pesticide ban wasn’t without controversy but it won the support of the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment, a group based in Toronto.
The association said chemicals used in pesticides and insecticides are linked to childhood cancer, birth defects and neurological disease.
Health Canada has said that 2,4-D, an active ingredient used in many popular weed killers, is safe on lawns and turf when directions are correctly followed.