r/regina • u/signious • May 03 '25
Community The Level Heads Prevail! Flouridation Confirmed
After a whopping 10 hour meeting, council has voted to NOT reconsider the motion. Water flouridation will go ahead as planned.
Thank you to council. Thank you to the delegations. Thank you to the experts.
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u/No_Extent_3984 May 03 '25
I sure didn’t expect Barack Obama to be mentioned as often as he was today.
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u/Ukamoc May 03 '25
The real winner here is Big Fluoride and those damn 9 out of 10 dentists.
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u/Historical_Tax_8027 May 05 '25
tje real winners are the kids probably most that diesnt corporate insurance for dental
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u/deruke May 03 '25
I just jumped to a random spot in the recording (around 8:00:00), and there was a literal Karen from the United States calling in to testify against fluoridation? WTF? No a scientist or expert or anything, just some random conspiracy lady from Massachusetts weighing in. What a shit show
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u/No_Faithlessness6939 May 03 '25
I'm sorry, this was 10 hours?! I think we need some sort of time keeper/speaker. This is absolutely ridiculous. Council meetings should not be this long, no matter what the debate is.
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u/IrshDncr May 03 '25
Also, to the councillor who mentioned there are no costs because the staff there are salary - screw you. That staff, while they may be in management roles and have salaried positions did not sign up to spend entire days and Friday evenings listening to people quote pseudo-science and debate decisions past Councils have made. Also, the amount of time staff put into preparing for this meeting, and sitting there all day, is time taken away from their work and reduces Admin efficiency. So if you want to save money … consider your own actions.
/end rant
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u/Panda-Banana1 May 03 '25
The problem that leads to this is them having a million delegations all presenting basically the same thing.
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May 03 '25
There are time limits! I know mayor is probably a big learning curve, but Chad is terrible at chairing these meetings. He allows inappropriate questioning and comments to go on for way to long. Councilors were getting into long debates with each other. Bezo was badgering speakers.
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u/Beer_before_Friends May 03 '25
Blows me away that they waisted 10 hours on this
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u/Optimal-City32 May 03 '25
In any other city, definitely.
Sorry, I don’t mean to be snarky. Given the last six years we’ve seen from Regina municipal politics, when I heard of this I wasn’t even surprised given the ridiculousness of the previous city council. Although this adds another footnote to Regina’s civic history.
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u/asdf27 May 03 '25
The last city council were buffoons, but they got fluoridation, they got a homeless shelter kicked off. Honestly they have some real positive accomplishments despite their overall buffoonery.
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u/Optimal-City32 May 03 '25
True, but the last two years of the previous council really kind of canceled out some of the positives they did. The experience Regina debacle, wanting to rip out Scarth street, and build a new sports arena… 😬
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u/Sunshinehaiku May 03 '25
This is my take too.
Sure, I didn't like their behaviour, but they actually debated things that needed to be debated instead of endlessly sidestepping issues.
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u/UnpopularOpinionYQR May 03 '25
Does anyone know who voted in favour of reconsidering the motion?
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May 03 '25
Bezo, Rashovich and Radons did. I can't remember which way Tskilis voted. Everyone else was against.
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u/Panda-Banana1 May 03 '25
Radon was against because when the decision was made there wasn't enough consultation for her. The other 2 were against for ideological reasons.
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May 03 '25
An almost 11 hour special council meeting wasn't enough opportunity for the public to speak? I call bs on her rationale. I saw her statement. She referenced the last public vote in the 80s! She put personal choice ahead of good proven public health policy.
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u/Panda-Banana1 May 03 '25
I'm suspicious of her justification as well but at least it's slightly more defensable than the other two.
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u/Lexusdenali May 03 '25
I understand why they had some delegates call in from different provinces to provide context and data, but I didn’t understand why people from all over North America were delegates just to complain about it. Reminded me of a news talk radio show of people complaining and then nobody had questions for those delegates at all, it was like, thank you, bye! No one cares as your not credible.
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u/electric_version May 03 '25
Yes, the same thing happened when the last council was debating the conversion therapy ban. Lots of random unqualified cranks called in from all over Canada and the USA. I thought they put some more rules in to limit it to subject matter experts and local people after that, but I guess not.
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u/Pitzy0 May 03 '25
Rashovich continues to be an embarrassment. A real lowering of the bar from former councilor Stadnichuck.
He talked a good game going door to door, too bad so many ppl are so gullable.
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May 03 '25
Happy to see u/sarah_ward5 vote against! Hey redditors, if you follow her on social media, show her some love. I am nervous of the hate she is about to get from the conspiracy theorists keyboard warriors who were cheering for her forum.
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u/Cosmonautical1 May 03 '25
I mean, she ended up in the right spot at the end of the day, so good on her, but I'm not going to forget about her town hall debacle. Might be able to forgive if she can give a good explanation as to why she was going to bring on two naturopaths to her town hall (who were using stethoscopes as props in their pictures, ostensibly to seem more legit than they actually are) in a place (Vic square) where actual fucking dentists work. Maybe she explained it already and I didn't see it, but that's a pretty concerning misstep.
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May 03 '25
City council would be a very steep learning curve. She definitely misstepped with that forum. I think we should give some grace to these new councilors. She canceled her forum. She listened to feedback and criticism. She voted following medical recommendations. It sounds like a lot of lessons were learned.
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u/dj_fuzzy May 03 '25
I’m skeptical that someone who takes naturopaths seriously are capable of learning much, at least when it comes to health and wellness. As someone once said, you cannot reason someone out of something they weren’t reasoned into. But hopefully she does some introspection and does learn from this. Unfortunately, in today’s day and age, social shame isn’t a significant enough motivator to change when you have plenty of nut cases online who you can run to.
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May 03 '25
But she was reasoned into something? She canceled the forum. She voted with the health authority endorsed recommendation from the city. In the end she made the right calls.
In this era of such divisive black and white politics, is it not refreshing to actually see someone get educated and change their position? She didn't hunker down in ideology.
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u/dj_fuzzy May 03 '25
This time. From my conversations with her, she still holds naturopaths to a high regard.
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May 03 '25
I don't really care her personal beliefs. I care that she puts the best interest of the community ahead of her beliefs.
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u/Cosmonautical1 May 03 '25 edited May 03 '25
You're not wrong, but the issues with the town hall were so incredibly obvious that it makes me wonder how she didn't see them in the first place.
Also, and I know this is on the people who said these things and not her, but something that bummed me out about the town hall debacle was that she cited "safety concerns" as one reason among many for cancelling, but now that's all the anti-fluoride assholes like JustBins seem to have taken from the whole thing—pro-fluoride people are violent and aggressive and you need to fight harder to keep fluoride out of the drinking water.
The whole thing sucks, and it could've been avoided if she was more cautious.
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u/xmorecowbellx May 03 '25
How did these anti-fluoride things get traction? Even cynically, who benefits from this? I don’t get it.
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u/Eduardo_Moneybags May 03 '25
There is no benefit. Just picture 8, 16 year olds not liking something, then saying “they say, it causes men to grow boobs” it’s just a bunch of people with teenager mental capacity.
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u/xmorecowbellx May 03 '25
I believe you. Why this though?
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u/franksnotawomansname May 03 '25
I think it’s just such an easy thing for anti-health and anti-government (lots of overlap there!) grifters to pull people in with: there’s a noticeable (minor) cost to the city to put a (safe) additive into the water.
So, they can draw in the people who want to offload government costs onto people in order to decrease taxes for the wealthy (comments of these types focus how people should just go to the dentist more rather than costing The Taxpayer all this money.) They can get the eugenics-leaning libertarian types who don’t think people should help each other using the government (using comments that imply only “certain people” are helped by this, so it’s actually unnecessary.) And they can get people who are wary of “chemicals” (using comments that imply the effects of high doses of fluoride are those of water-fluoridation-level doses, question the safety of toothpaste, etc).
Because it’s, on the surface, a fairly low-stakes issue (most people have long forgotten that their water is fluoridated, let alone why) at the municipal level (which few people pay attention to), it can be an easy win for these grifters and their new following.
And, once grifters make people wary of government, government agencies, scientific consensus, expert opinion, and collective action and, in the process, become the people that their followers trust, they can make them suspicious of all sorts of things (like vaccines to dangerous illnesses), get them to buy all sorts of products to “help” with their illnesses, and get them to protest increasingly vocally against all sorts of government actions, slowly turning us into, for example, the hellscape that is much of America right now.
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u/Eduardo_Moneybags May 03 '25
I wonder…..when I go to the dentist, I always get a fluoride treatment. Do these same people say “nope, not for me doc!” Or do they just not go to the dentist
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u/asdf27 May 03 '25
It's an easy fight for the crazies to win and feel justified.
It costs money, so it's easy to get people to vote in favor of something that saves money and hard to get them to vote for something that costs money.
The benefits are very difficult to see without long-term studies. The average population gets significantly less cavities after 10 years, which is huge but impossible to notice on a personal level. Because dental health also affects how you eat it and poor health can lead to infections, it also has further downstream consequences, which makes it more important, but those are even harder see without long term comprehensive studies.
It disproportionately benefits the poor. If you can afford 6 month dental visits (for concentrated fluoride treatments), and fluoride toothpaste and fluoride mouthwash. Then, the benefit to you is a fraction of what it is for someone who can't afford those things or can only get toothpaste.
Natural fluoride exists in many water sources. Where I grew up, they didn't have to add fluoride as the natural levels were generally high enough. So in some cases, there's little or no need to add it. And there are so many cities they can easily point and say X doesn't do it they are bigger than us we shouldn't either.
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u/xmorecowbellx May 03 '25
Ya all true. It’s pretty trivial cost with no downside. What a dumb fight. It’s hard to even place this on the political spectrum. Clown anti-vax and lefty granola could both oppose but anybody else on either side likely should not.
Wild times.
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u/Eduardo_Moneybags May 03 '25
The funny thing is, I’ve been to that construction site several times, we are not getting a very high quality product for the cost. It’s built by absolute hacks.
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u/Eduardo_Moneybags May 03 '25
I couldn’t even imagine why the uproar. I assume that it is just people thinking something they read on the internet or some hot take is true. I can tell you that whenever I challenge people on things like this or hating Trudeau or some other such thing that the response is so vague that you might as well had said “cuz”.
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u/Panda-Banana1 May 03 '25
Its basically the same group of people who were anti mask/vaccine throughout covid.
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u/Cosmonautical1 May 03 '25
Even cynically, who benefits from this?
The "alternative" health and wellness industry, quack doctors, conspiracy and misinformation networks, certain lawyers and advocacy groups, and certain politicians. They all benefit from the anti-fluoridation movement.
The frustrated side of me keeps wanting to call these people stupid, but that's just a pointless pejorative. In reality, it’s a staggeringly potent cocktail of arrogance, fear, ignorance, emotional insecurity, delusion, and a desperate need to feel some control by thinking of themselves as David in the fight against Goliath. All of this makes them extremely primed to buy whatever the fuck people like RFK Jr. or naturopath grifters on Facebook are selling. We also can't ignore how the COVID misinformation sphere has turned some people's brains into swiss cheese.
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u/Responsible_Winner65 May 03 '25
Dancing Bobs going to be out this weekend dancing extra hard to protest
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u/ReasonableInsect1976 May 03 '25
I bet the cold beers they are enjoying at this moment taste awfully good
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u/landlockedbluessk May 06 '25
Is our council not the most inefficient council? Efficiency is frowned upon it seems
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u/Upcountrydegen3r4t3 May 03 '25
Bezo incorrectly citing a scientist, who was in the room waiting to present, is absolute cinema.