Enough is enough.  With your help we’re heading to court to get bee killing pesticides off the market.

We have asked nicely, presented scientific evidence, signed petitions even elected a new government, but politicians and bureaucrats in Ottawa have done nothing.

You know the story – research findings clearly link it with immediate bee deaths and longer term harmful impacts on bees and other pollinators.

Two of them Clothianidin and Thiamethoxam have been applied to millions of acres for more than 10 years without the regulator having key science on the pesticides’ environmental risks to pollinators.

So today, Friends of the Earth, in cooperation with three other groups, and represented by Ecojustice, is asking the court to declare the registrations invalid.  And you can’t use a pesticide in Canada if it’s not validly registered.

These products have been out in the fields across Canada all this time without the PMRA having the science necessary for determining whether their risks to bees is acceptable. We know millions of honey bees have been killed off. No one knows what damage has been done because PMRA nor Environment Canada is monitoring to wild bees. Legally, PMRA is supposed to have “reasonable certainty” that a pesticide will cause no harm to the environment before registering it. The PMRA has failed to live up to this standard by continually registering Clothianidin and Thiamethoxam pesticides in the absence of science on risks to bees that the Agency itself has deemed critical.

Other jurisdictions have taken steps – the European Union has a moratorium in place for three commonly used neonics and Ontario has permanently regulated down the use of these neonics.  But not without a lot of help from you and hundreds of thousands of Friends of the Earth supporters in the EU and Canada.