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But that did not faze B.C. municipal leaders.

By a 60% margin, the Union of B.C. Municipalities (UBCM) agreed that the “potential unintended consequences” were too great, and voted to make the province a “refuge from genetically engineered contamination.”

In the past few years, towns, villages and cities throughout Canada have passed a wave of laws that could well be described as “anti-science.” Water fluoridation bans. Anti-WiFi resolutions. GE free zones. The decisions often fly in the face of scientific consensus, ignore the advice of experts and lend legitimacy to groups once considered fringe.

But, as activists are starting to discover, science does not matter when a city hall meeting is facing a room full of angry townsfolk.

“It is very easy for a small group of people to show up at a town council meeting and, the councillors aren’t scientists, they don’t know, they just know they’ve got a whole bunch of angry constituents,” said Iain Martel, a co-chair with the Committee for the Advancement of Scientific Skepticism, an offshoot of the U.S. Center for Inquiry, which examines science claims in public policy.

Of late, one of the most successful of these groups has been water de-fluoridation activists. Fears of fluoridated water have lingered on the fringe for decades, but only in the last few years has it begun making serious headway.

Since 2010, more than 20 Canadian municipalities, including such major centres as Calgary, have bowed to anti-fluoridation delegations and discontinued a practice that, according to the World Health Organization, the European Academy of Paediatric Dentistry and a vast coalition of dental health boards, is a safe and cost-effective way to prevent tooth decay.