The councilors’ rationale is that the city wouldn’t have the resources to police the ban if it were enforced. So therefore the council did nothing.

Not that Calgary is any of my business, I guess, but I think the council misses the point here. The fact is that a law, any law, won’t stop EVERYONE from breaking that law, but it will stop most people. If a bylaw banning pesticides had been passed, it’s fair to say that pesticide use would have been reduced by, say, 98 percent.

In Hudson, Quebec, where the first-ever ban on pesticides was enacted in 1991, the town has never fined anyone for pesticide abuse. Everyone knows a few people in town who are breaking the law, but the residents generally take comfort in the fact that their town is virtually pesticide free.

Calgary’s action is akin to taking down speed limits — just because not everyone obeys them.

It was just a bad decision.

Elliott, who is a key figure in the documentary film, A Chemical Reaction, had hinted to us that he was considering running for the town’s top elected office. The filming of the movie, he said, made him realize he “had a lot of unfinished business.”

Ultimately, when Elliott announced he was running, no one else in the town of 5,200 stepped forward to oppose him. He earned the seat by acclimation.

That sets up an intriguing battle. The town’s three golf courses have been exempted from the town’s historic anti-pesticide bylaw that took effect in 1991 and many folks, Elliott included, have objected to the courses’ free ride with pesticides. Will the new/old sheriff take on this fight to make history a second time around? I wouldn’t bet against it.