MONTREAL — Municipal officials are considering an end to water fluoridation on the Island of Montreal in a move spurred by a petition from a resident who claims he has the support of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
A council representing Montreal and the suburban municipalities on the island are scheduled to vote Thursday evening on whether the six West Island suburbs that treat their water with fluoride should stop the practice.
The city’s water department has recommended that fluoridation be stopped, in part due to cost, though public health officials support fluoridation 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 haven’t been consulted and the process is undemocratic.
In a report dated March 2024, the water department says it began considering the use of fluoride in the water supply after receiving a “citizen petition” in 2020. That petition was launched by resident Ray Coelho, who said in a recent Facebook post that his campaign is supported by Kennedy.
“I’ve spoken to RFK on a few occasions, he congratulated me on ending fluoridation in Montreal,” he wrote earlier this month. The Canadian Press was unable to reach Coelho for comment.
Kennedy, a vaccine skeptic who has been tapped by United States president-elect Donald Trump to be his health secretary, claims that fluoride is an “industrial waste” linked to a range of health problems, and has said the Trump administration will remove the mineral from the U.S. public water supply.
Coelho has an active social media presence, and he posts often about the Israel-Hamas war, calling Israel a “genocidal terrorist state.” He ran in the 2019 federal election for the now-defunct Canadian Nationalist Party, a far-right white nationalist party that was deregistered by Elections Canada in 2022. He told the Montreal Gazette he is no longer associated with the party.
“I really question what type 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 appears to be “inspired by conspiracy theories,” and said many of the residents in her suburb are “furious” about the city’s plan. “What’s going on in the United States should not creep into decision-making in our country,” she said.
Georges Bourelle, mayor of Beaconsfield, called Coelho a “far-right extremist,” and said he doesn’t put “a lot of credibility on petitions.” None of the affected communities, including Beaconsfield, has ever requested that fluoride be removed from its water, he said.