Re: RDN urged to address air quality issues now (The NEWS, Nov. 21, 2017).
Parksville Mayor and RDN Director Marc Lefebvre said, after reading all the literature about the harmful health effects of smoke, “I put on my layman’s glasses and I sincerely believe, looking at all these issues cropping up, I think we should ban woodstoves and fireplaces.”
“To me that’s one of the only ways that I think, if we’re going to do anything substantial,” said Lefebvre, who added that in Parkskville, although backyard burning is controlled pretty well, with the “hundreds” of woodstoves and fireplaces in the city, at the present time they do “absolutely very little.”
“Bigger cities have done it… I think the City of Montreal has a seven- or eight-year timeframe that all woodstoves are banned,” said Lefebvre.
This was said during the RDN directors’ meeting on the 14th of November, 2017, and we have still not seen or heard of any action from Mayor Lefebvre and/or Parksville Council on banning woodstoves.
It’s time to act now, not after another study which proves that wood smoke still kills.
Bob Budd
Parksville